Glass f S S ft 
 Book l^ .i' hA 
 
^a^ 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. LEA¥IS CASS, OF MICHIGAN, 
 
 ON 
 
 THE OREGON QUESTION. 
 
 DELIYERED 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MONDAY, MARCH 30, 1846. 
 
 The Joint Resolution for giving the notice to tei-- 
 minato the convention between the United States 
 and Great Britain, relative to the Oregon terri- 
 tory, being under considerEition— 
 
 - Mr. CASS addressed the Senate as follows: 
 
 Mr. President: I do not rise at this late period 
 to enter into any formal consideration of the prin- 
 cipal topic involved in the proposition now pending 
 before the Senate. I cannot flatter myself, that any 
 such effort of mine would be successful, or would 
 deserve to be so. I have listened attentively to the 
 progress of this discussion, and while I acknowl- 
 edge my gratification at much I have heard, still 
 sentiments have been advanced, and views pre- 
 sented, in which I do not concur, and from which, 
 even at the hazard of trespassing upon the indul- 
 gence of the Senate, I must express my dissent, 
 and briefly the reasons of it. But, sir, I have not 
 the I'emotest intention of touching the question of 
 the title of Oregon. The tribute I bring to that 
 subject is the tribute of conviction, not of discus- 
 sion; a concurrence in the views of others, not 
 the presentation of my own. The whole matter 
 has been placed in bold relief before the country 
 and the world by men far more competent, than I 
 am to do it justice, and justice they have done it. 
 The distinguished Senator from South Carolina, 
 who filled, a short time since, theofiice of Secreta- 
 ry of State, has left the impress of his talents and 
 intelligence upon his correspondence with the Brit- 
 ish Minister, and he left to an able successor to 
 finish well a task, which was well begun. And 
 upon this floor, the Senator from New York in- 
 structed us, while he gratified us, by a masterly 
 vindication of the American title; and he was fol- 
 '•owed by his colleague, and by the Senator from 
 Illinois, and by others, too, who have done honor 
 to themselves, while doing good service to their 
 cotmtry. 
 
 Before, however, I proceed further in my re- 
 marks, there is one subject, to which I will make 
 a passing allusion. As to correcting the misrep- 
 resentatioivs of the day, whether these are volunta- 
 ry or involuntary, he that seeks to do it, only pre- 
 pares for himself an abundant harvest of disap- 
 pointment, and, I may add, of vexation. I seek 
 no such impracticable object. In times like the 
 present, when interests are threatened, passions; 
 
 excited, parties animated, and when momentous 
 questions present themselves for solution, and the 
 public mind is alive to the slightest sensation, we 
 must expect, that those, upon whose action depends 
 the welfare, if not the destiny, of the country, will 
 be arraigned, and assailed, and condemned. I 
 presume we are all prepared for this. We have 
 all lived long enough to know, that this is the tax, 
 which our position pays to its elevation. We have 
 frequently been reminded, during the progress of 
 this debate, of the responsibihty, which men of ex- 
 treme opinions, as some of us have been called, 
 must encounter, and have been summoned to meet 
 it — to meet the consequences of the measures we 
 invoke. 
 
 During the course of a public life, now verging 
 towards forty years, I have been placed in many a 
 condition of responsibility; and often, too, where 
 I had few to aid me, and none to consult. I have 
 found myself able to march up to my duty, and no 
 responsibility, in cities or in forests, has been cast 
 upon me, which I have not readily met. 
 
 As it is with me, so it is, I doubt not, with my 
 political friends, who regard this whole matter as I 
 do, and who are ready to follow it to its final issue, 
 whatever or wherever that may be. I submit to 
 honorable Senators on the other side of the Cham- 
 ber, whether these adjurations are in good taste; 
 whether it is not fair to presume, that we have look- 
 ed around us, examined what in our judgment we 
 ought to do, and then determined to do it, come 
 what may? This great controversy with England 
 cannot be adjusted without a deep and solemn re- 
 sponsibility being cast upon all of us. If there is 
 a responsibility in going forward, there is a respon- 
 sibility in standing still. Peace has it dangers as 
 well as war. They are not indeed of the same 
 kind, but they may be more lasting, more dishon- 
 orable, and more destructive of the best interests of 
 the country; because destructive of those hopes and 
 sentiments, which elevate the moral above the ma- 
 terial world. Let us, then, leave to egch member 
 of this body the course that duty points out to 
 him, together with the responsibility he must meet, 
 whether arraigned at the tribunal of his conscience, 
 his constituents, or his country. 
 
 I observe, that as well myself, as other Senators, 
 upon this side of the Senate have been accused of 
 dealing in rani and abuse — that I believe is the term — 
 
 In cscfcanse 
 
•^t"^. 
 
 
 in the remarks we have submitted, from time to 
 time, upon the subject, as it came up incidentally 
 or directly for consideration. Tliis rant and abuse, 
 of course, had reference to remarks upon the con- 
 duct and pretensions of England. 
 
 I should not have adverted to this topic, had it 
 not been that the honorable Senator from North 
 Carolina, [Mr. Haywood,] not now in his place, 
 has given color to the charge, by the expression 
 of his "mortification in being obliged to concede 
 ' to the debates in the British Parliament a'-decided 
 ' superiority over ourselves in their dignity and 
 * moderation." 
 
 He expressed the hope that " we might get the 
 ' news by the next packet of an outrageous debate 
 « in the British Parliament." "At least sufficient 
 ' to put them even with us on that score." 
 
 Now, Mr. President, it is not necessary to wait 
 for the next packet for specimens of the courtesies 
 of British parliamentary eloquence, 
 
 I hold one in my hands, which has been here 
 some time, and which, from the circumstances, 
 and from the station of the speaker, I at least may 
 be permitted to refer to, when I find myself, among 
 others, charged with participating in an outrageous 
 debate, and when patriotism would seem to de- 
 mand an unbecoming exhibition in the British 
 Parliament, in order to restore, not our dignity, but 
 our self-complacency. 
 
 Now, sir, 1 am a fii-m behever in the courtesies 
 of life, public and private; and I desire never to 
 depart from them. In all I have said, I have not 
 uttered a word, which ought to give oflTence, even 
 to* poHtical fastidiousness. I have spoken, to be 
 sure, plainly, as became a man dealing in great 
 truths, involving the character and interests of his 
 country, but becomingly. I have not, indeed, 
 called ambition moderation; nor cupidity, philan- 
 thropy; nor arrogance, humility. Let him do so, 
 who believes them such. But I have heard the 
 desire of the West, that the sacred rights of their 
 country should be enforced and defended, called 
 icestern avidity, in the Senate of the United States ! 
 I have not even imitated Lord John Russell, and 
 talked of blustering. Still less have I imitated a 
 greater than Lord John Russell in 4alents, and 
 one higher in station, though far lower in those 
 qualities, that conciliate respect and esteem, and 
 preserve them. 
 
 He who seeks to know the appetite of the Brit- 
 ish public for abuse, and how greedilj^it is catered 
 for, has but to consult the dally columns of the 
 British journals; but let him, who has persuaded 
 himself that all is decorum in the British Parlia- 
 ment, and that these legislative halls are but bear- 
 gardens compared with it, turn to the speeches 
 sometimes delivered there. Let him turn to a 
 speech delivered by the second man in the realm, 
 by the late Lord Chancellor of England, theThcr- 
 sites indeed of his day and country, but with high 
 intellectual powers, and a vast stock of informa- 
 tion, and who no doubt understands the taste of 
 his countrjwTien, and knows how to gratify it. 
 
 I have no pleasure in these exhibitions, which 
 lessen the dignity of human nature; but we must 
 look to the dark as well as to the bright side of 
 life, if we desire to bring our opinions to the stand- 
 ard of experience. In a debate in the British 
 House of Lords, on the 7th of April, 1843, I had 
 the honor to be the subject of the vituperation of 
 
 Lord Brougham ; and an honor I s'hall esteem 
 it, under the circumstances, as long as the honors 
 of this world have any interest for me. I shall 
 make no other allusion to the matter but what is 
 necessary to the object I have in view, to exhibit 
 the style of debate there, so much lauded here, 
 and held up to our countrymen as the beau ideal of 
 all that is courteous and dignified in political life. 
 "There was one man," said the ex-chancellor, 
 " who was the very impersonation of mob-hostil- 
 ' ity to England. He wished to name him, that the 
 ' name might be clear as the guilt was undivided. 
 ' He meant General Cass, whose breach of duty 
 ' to his own Government was so discreditable, and 
 ' even more flagrant than his breach of duty to hu- 
 ' manityasaman, and as the free descendent of free 
 ' English parents, and whose conduct in all those 
 ' particulars it was impossible to pass over or pal- 
 ' liate. This person , who had been sent to maintain 
 ' peace, and to reside at Paris for that purpose, after 
 ' pacific relations had been established between 
 ' France and America, did his best to break it, 
 ' whether by the circulation of statements upon the 
 ' question of international law, of which he had no 
 ' more conception than of the languages that were 
 ' spoken in the moon, [loud laughter,"] (this sar- 
 casm provoked their grave lordships to merri- 
 ment,) " or by any other arguments of reason, for 
 ' which he had no more capacity, than he had for 
 ' understanding legal points and differences. " "For 
 ' that purpose he was not above pandering to the 
 ' worst mob feeling of the United States" — " a law- 
 ' less set of rabble politicians of inferior caste and ! 
 'station'" — "a grovelling, groundling set of politic 
 ' cians'^ — " a set of mere rabble, as contradistinguish- 
 ' ed from persons of property, or respectability, and oft 
 ' info7-mafion" — "groundlings in station," 8fc. 
 
 And I am thus characterized by this modest and : 
 moderate English lord, because I did what little waa i 
 in my power to defeat one of the most flagitious . 
 attempts of modern times to establish a dominion 
 over the seas, and which, under the pretext of 
 abolishing the slave trade, and by virtue of a quin- 
 tuple treaty, would have placed the flag, and ships, , 
 and seamen of our country, at the disposal of Eng- 
 land . 
 
 Lord Brougham did not always talk thus — not t 
 when one of his friends applied to me in Paris to i 
 remove certain unfavorable impressions made in ai 
 high quarter by one of those imprudent and impul- 
 sive remarks, which seem to belong to his moral i 
 
 habits. The effort was successful. And now. 
 
 my account of good for evil with Lord Brougham i 
 is balanced. 
 
 It is an irksome task to cull expressions likee 
 these, and repeat them here. I hold them up not 
 as a warning — that is not needed — but to repel tlip 
 intimation, that we ought to study the courtes^s 
 of our position in the British Parliament- 
 
 When I came here, sir, I felt it due to myself to 
 arraign no one's motives, but to yield the ^ame | 
 credit for integrity of action to others, wAich I 
 claimed for myself. The respect I owed to those 
 who sent me here, and to those to wliom I waa 
 sent, equally dictated this course. If some of us, 
 as has been intimated, are small men) who have 
 attained high places, if we have no other claim to 
 this false distinction, I hope we shall at least es- 
 tablish that claim, which belongs to decorum of 
 language and conduct, to life and conversation. 
 
s 
 
 We all occupy positions hefe high enotigh, and 
 \iseful enough, if usefully filled, to satisfy the 
 Pleasure of any man's ambition. It ought to be 
 -our pride and our effort to identify ourselves with 
 this representative body of the sovereignties of the 
 States, With this great depository of so much of 
 the power of the American people in the three 
 ■great departments of their Government, executive, 
 legislative, and judicial — to establish an esprit du 
 •corps, which, white it shall leave us free to fulfil 
 «ur duties, whether to our country or to our party, 
 «hal] yet unite us in a determination to discard 
 «verything, which can diminish the influence, or 
 lessen the dignity, of the Senate of the United 
 States, While I have the honor of a seat here, I 
 will do -nothing to counteract these views. I will 
 bandy words of reproach with no one. And the 
 same measure of courtesy I am prepared to mete 
 to others, I trust v/ill be meted by others to me. 
 At any mte, if they are not, I will have no conten- 
 tion in this chamber, 
 
 I have regretted many expressions which have 
 been heard during the progress of this discussion. 
 Faction-. demaffogues-,tdtra patriots, ambitious leaders, 
 inflammatory appeals, invective, little men seeking to 
 he great cues, and other terms and epithets, not pleas- 
 ant to hear, and still less pleasant to repeat. Now, 
 sir, nothing is easier than a bitter retort; and he 
 who impugns the motives of others, cannot com- 
 plain, if he is accused of measuring them by his 
 own standard, and seeking, in liis own breast, their 
 rule of action. If one portion of the Senate is ac- 
 cused of being idtra on the side of their country's 
 pretensions, how easy to retort the charge by accu- 
 sing the accusers of being ultra on the other ? But 
 what is gained by this war of words ? Nothing. 
 On the contrary, we lower our dignity as Senators, 
 and our charactei-s as men. For myself, I repudi- 
 ate it all, I will have no part nor lot in it. I ques- 
 tion the motives of no honorable Senator. I be- 
 lieve we have all one common object — the honor 
 and interest of our country. We differ as to the 
 best means of action, and that difference is one of 
 the tributes due to human fallibility. But there is 
 no exclusive patriotism, on one side or other of this 
 body; and I hope there will be no exclusive claim 
 to iu 
 
 Some days since, in an incidental discussion, 
 which sprung up, I remarked that I could not per- 
 ■ceive why the parallel of 49^ was assumed as the 
 boundary of our claim. Why any man planted his 
 foot on that suppositious line upon the face of the 
 globe, and erecting a barrier there, said all to the 
 north belongs to England, and all to the south to 
 the United States. My remark was merely the ex- 
 pression of my views, without touching the reasons 
 on vi^hich they were founded. The honorable Sen- 
 ators from Maine, and Maryland, and Georg-ia, 
 have since called in question the accuracy of this 
 opinion, and have entered somewhat at length into 
 the considerations, which prove that line the true 
 line of demarcation between the two countries. 
 And tlw Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Hay- 
 wood] lays much stress upon this matter, making 
 it in fact the foundation of a large portion of his 
 argument. That parallel is, in his view, the wall 
 of separation between our questionable and our un- 
 questionable clahns. To the south he would not 
 yield; to the north he would, though he thinks 
 that even there our title is the best. There is an 
 
 erroneous impression upon this subject somewhere, 
 either with the ultra, or (if I may coin a v/ord) the 
 un-ultrct advocates of Oi-egon; and as this line 
 seems to be a boundary, beyond which we may 
 look, indeed, and wish, but must not go, it is worth 
 while to examine summarily what are its real pre- 
 tensions to the character thus assumed for it, of 
 being the line of contact and of separation between 
 two great nations. 
 
 There is no need of discussing the right of civ- 
 ilized nations to appropriate to themselves coun- 
 tries, newly discovered and inhabited by barbarous 
 tribes. The principle and the practice have been 
 sanctioned by centuries of experience. What con- 
 stitutes this right of appropriation , so as to exclude 
 other nations from its exercise in a given case, is a 
 question, which has been differently settled in dif- 
 ferent ages of the world. At one time it was the 
 Pope's bull which conferred the title; at another it 
 was discovery only; then settlement under some 
 circumstances, and under others discovery; and 
 then settlennent and discover)' combined. There 
 has been neither a uniform rule, nor a uniform 
 practice. But under any circumstances, it is not 
 easy to see why a certain parallel of latitude is de- 
 clared to be the boundary of our claim. If the val- 
 ley of a river were assumed, a principle might be 
 also assumed, which would shut us up in it. This 
 would be a natural and a tangible boundary. How, 
 indeed, England could look to her own practice and 
 a.cquisitions, and say to us, you are stopped by 
 this hill, or by that valley, or by that river, I know 
 not. England, whose colonial charters extended 
 from the Atlantic to the South sea, as the Pacific 
 ocean was then called, and who actually ejected the 
 French from the country between the mountains 
 and the Mississippi, where they had first estab- 
 hshed themselves, upon the very ground that their 
 own rights of discovery, as shown by these chart- 
 ers, ran indefinitely west; and who now holds the 
 continent of Australia — a region larger than Eu- 
 rope — by virtue of the right of discovery; or, in 
 other words, because Captain Cook sailed along 
 a portion of its coast, and occasionally hoisted a 
 pole, or buried a bottle. I am well aware there 
 must be limits to this conventional title, by which 
 new countries are claimed; nor will it be always 
 easy to assign them in fact, as they cannot be 
 assigned in principle. We claim the Oregon ter- 
 ritory. The grounds of this claim are before the 
 world. The country it covers extends from Cal- 
 ifornia to the Russian possessions, and from the 
 Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean, — a homoge- 
 neous country, unclaimed by England, when our 
 title commenced, similar in its character, its pro- 
 ductions, its climate, its interests, and its wants, in 
 all that constitutes natural identity, and by these 
 elements of union, calculated forever to be united 
 together, — no more to be divided by the paral- 
 lel of 49°, than by the parallel of 43°, nor by 
 any of the geographical circles marked upon arti- 
 ficial globes. No more to be so divided, than any of 
 the possessions of England, scattered over the 
 world. In thus claiming the whole of this unap- 
 propriated country, unappropriated when our title 
 attached to it, the valley of the Columbia, the val- 
 ley of Frazer's river, and all the other hills and 
 valleys which diversify its surface, we but follow 
 the example set us by the nations of the other 
 hemisphere, and hold on to the possession of a 
 
country, wliich is one, and ought to be indivisible. 
 
 It is contended that this parallel of 49° is the 
 northern boundary of our just claim, because for 
 many years it was assumed as such by our Gov- 
 ernment, and that we are bound by its early course 
 in this controversy; that the treaty of Utrecht, 
 in 1713, between France and England, provided 
 for the appointment of commissioners, to establish 
 a luie of division between their respective colonies 
 upo)! the continent of North America, and that this 
 parallel of 49° was thus established. The honor- 
 able Senator from Georgia, in his remarks a few 
 days since, if he did not abandon this pretension, 
 still abandoned all reference to it, in the support of 
 his position. He contended, that the parallel of 
 49° was our boundary, but for other reasons. In 
 the view I am now taking, sir, my piincipal object, 
 as will be seen, is to show, that we are at full" lib- 
 erty to assert our claim to the country north of 49°, 
 unembarrassed by the early action of our own Gov- 
 ernment, by showing that the Government was led 
 into error respecting its rights by an historical state- 
 ment, probably inaccurate in itself, certainly inac- 
 curate, if applied to Oregon, but then supposed to 
 be true in both respects. Now, what was this 
 error .' It was the assertion I have just mentioned, 
 that agreeably to the treaty of Utrecht, the parallel 
 of 49° was established as a boundary, and having 
 been continued west, had become the northern limit 
 of Oregon — at least of our Oregon. Upon this 
 ground, and upon this ground alone, rested the 
 actions and the pretensions of our Government in 
 this matter. So far, then, as any question of na- 
 tional faith or justice is involved in this subject, we 
 must test the proceedings of the Government by its 
 owii views, not by other considerations presented 
 here at this day. The Government of the United 
 States gave to that of Great Britain their claim, 
 and their reasons for it. That claim first stopped 
 at 49°, while the treaty of Utrecht was supposed 
 to affect it, as part of Louisiana, and before we had 
 acquired another title by the acquisition of Florida. 
 Since then, it has been ascertained that that treaty 
 never extended to Oregon; and we have strength- 
 ened and perfected our claim by another purcha.se. 
 It is for these reasons, that I confine myself to what 
 has passed between the two Governments, with a 
 view to ascertain our present obligations, and omit 
 the considerations presented by the honorable Sen- 
 ator from Georgia. I will barely remark, however, 
 that in the far most important fact to which he re- 
 'fers, as affecting the extent of our claim — to wit: 
 the latitude of tlie source of the Columbia river — 
 he is under a misapprehension. He put it at 49°. 
 But it is far north of that. It is navigable by ca- 
 noes to the Three Forks, about the latitude of 52° 
 How far beyond that is its head spring, I know not. 
 
 Mr. Greenhow, in his work on Oregon — a work 
 marked with talent, industry, and caution — has 
 explained how this misapprehension respecting the 
 parallel of 49° originated. He has brought for- 
 ward proofs, both positive and negative, to show 
 that no such line was established by the treaty of 
 Utrecht, nor by commissaries, named to carry its 
 provisions into effect. I shall not go over the sub- 
 ject, but beg leave to refer the gentlemen, who 
 maintain the contrary opinion, to the investiga- 
 tions they will find in that work. The assertion, 
 however, has been so peremptorily made, and the 
 conclusions drawn from it, if true, and if the line 
 
 extended to Oregon, would discredit so large a 
 portion of our title to that country, that I may be 
 pardoned for briefly alluding to one or two consid- 
 erations, which seem to me to demonstrate the er- 
 ror respecting this assumed line of parallel of 49°, 
 at any rate in its extension to Oregon. 
 
 It will be perceived, sir, that there are two 
 questions involved in this matter: one a purely 
 historical question, whether commissaries acting 
 under the treaty of Utrecht, established the parallel 
 of 49° as the boundary between the French and 
 English possessions upon this continent; and the 
 other a practical one, v/hether such a line was ex- 
 tended west to the Pacific ocean. 
 
 As to the first, sir, I refer honorable Senators to 
 Mr. Greenhow's work, and to the authorities he 
 quotes. I do not presume to speak authoritatively 
 upon the question, but I do not hesitate to express 
 my opinion that Mr. Greenhow has made out a 
 strong case; and my own impression is, that such 
 a line was not actually and ofRcially established. 
 Still, sir, I do not say that it is a point, upon which 
 there may not be differences of opinion; nor diat, 
 however it may be ultimately determined, the so- 
 lution of the matter will discredit the judgment of 
 any one. This, Iwwever, has relation to the line 
 terminating with the Hudson Bay possessions; 
 and, as I have observed, the fact is a mere ques- 
 tion of history, without the least bearing upon our 
 controversy with England. 
 
 I have, however, one preliminary remark to make 
 in this connexion, and it is this: let him who as- 
 serts that our claim west of the Rocky mountains 
 is bounded by the parallel of 49°, prove it. The 
 burden is upon him, not upon vis. If commissaries 
 under the treaty of Utrecht established it, produce 
 their award. Proof of it, if it exists, is to be found 
 in London or Paris. Such an act was not done 
 without leaving the most authentic evidence be- 
 hind it. Produce it. When was the award made? 
 What were its terms .'' What were its circumstan- 
 ces ? Why, a suit between man and man for an 
 indi of land, would not be decided by such evidence 
 as this, especially discredited as it is, in any court 
 of the United States. The party claiming under it 
 would be told. There is better evidence in yourpoicer. 
 Seek it in London or Paris, and bring forirard the cer- 
 tified copy of the proceedings of the co7nmissioners. 
 This is equally the dictate of common sense and of 
 common law, and there is not always the same 
 union between those high tribunals, as many know, 
 to their cost. Let no man, therefore, assume this 
 line as a barrier to his country's claim without 
 proving it. 
 
 This line is first historically made known in the 
 negotiations between our Government and that of 
 England by Mr. Madison, in a despatch to Mr. 
 Monroe in 1804. Mr. Madison alludes to an his' 
 torical notice he had somewhere found, stating that 
 commissioners under the treaty of Utrecht had es- 
 tablished the line of 49° as the boundary of the 
 British and Fi-ench possessions, thus fixing that par- 
 allel as the northern boundary of Louisiana. I 
 have examined this despatch, and I find that he ' 
 speaks doubtfully respecting the authenticity of 
 this notice; and desires Mr. Monroe, before he 
 made it the basis of a proposition, to ascertain if 
 the facts were truly stated, as the means of doing ; 
 so were not to be found in this country. Mr. Mon- 
 roe, however, could have made no investigation; or 
 
if lie did so, ic nrast Tiave been unsatisfactoiy, for 
 he transmits the j)roposition substantially in the 
 words of the historian Douglas, from whom, prob- 
 ably, Mr, Madison acquired this notice, without 
 reference to any authority, either historical or dip- 
 lomatic, 
 
 I cannot find, that the British Government ever 
 took the slightest notice of the assertion respecting 
 this incident, growing out of the treaty of Utrecht, 
 though it has iDcen referred to more than once by 
 •our diplomatic agents, in tlieir communications to 
 the British authorities since that period. 
 
 But in late years, it has disappeared from the 
 ■correspondence, and neither party has adverted to 
 it, nor relied upon it. It is strange, indeed, that in 
 this body we should now assume the existence of 
 a fact like this, supposed to have a most important 
 bearing upon the rights of the parties, when the 
 able men to whose custody the maintenance of 
 these rights has been recently committed, have to- 
 tally abandoned it in their arguments and illustra- 
 tions. The assumption was originally an errone- 
 ous one — certainly so, so far as respects Oregon; 
 but while it was believed to be true, the conse- 
 quences were rightfully and lionestly carried out 
 by Our Government, and the line was claimed as 
 a boundary. But our Government is now better 
 informed, as the British Government, no doubt, al- 
 ways were, and thence their silence upon the sub- 
 ject; and the titles of both parties are investigated 
 without refereiice to this historical error, or to the 
 ■position in which it temporarily placed them. 
 
 The ti-eaty of Utrecht never refers to the parallel 
 of 49°, and the boundaries it proposed to establish 
 were those between the French and English colo- 
 nies, including the Hudson Bay Company in Can- 
 dida. The charter of the Hudson Bay Company 
 granted to the proprietors all the " lands, coun- 
 tries, and territories," upon the waters discharging 
 ■themselves into Hudson's Bay. At the date of the 
 treaty of Utrecht, which was in 1713, Great Brit- 
 ain claimed nothing west of those " lands, coun- 
 tries, and territories,'" and of course there was no- 
 thing to divide between her and France w-est of 
 that line. 
 
 Again, in 1?13, the northwestern coast was al- 
 most a terra incognita — a blank upon the map of 
 the world, England then neither knew a foot of 
 it, nor claimed a foot of it. By adverting to the 
 letter of Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, communi- 
 cating an accotmt of their interview with Messrs. 
 "Goulburn and Robinson, British conimissionei-e, 
 dated October 20th, 1818, and to the letter of Mr. 
 Pakenhara to Mr, Calhoun, dated September 
 12th, 1844, it will be seen that the commencement 
 of the British claim is effectively limited to the 
 discoveries of Captain Cook in 1778. How, then, 
 ■could a boundary have been established fifty years 
 before, in a region where no Englishman had ever 
 penetrated, and to which England had never as- 
 serted a pretension ? And yet the assumption, that 
 the parallel of 49 degrees was established by the 
 treaty of Utrecht, as a line between France and 
 England, in those unknown regions, necessarily 
 ■involves these inconsistent conclusions. But be- 
 sides, if England^ as a party to the treaty of 
 Utrecht, established this line running to the west- 
 •ern ocean as the northern boundary of Louisiana, 
 ■what possible claim has she now south of that line ? 
 The very fact of her existing pretensions, how- 
 
 ever unfounded these may be, shows that she con- 
 siders herself no party to such a line of division. 
 It shows, in fact, that no line was run; for if it had 
 been, the evidence of it would be in the English 
 archives, and, in truth, would be known to the 
 world without contradiction. . The establishment 
 of a boundary between two great nations is no 
 hidden fact; and we may now safely assume, that 
 the parallel of 49° never divided the Oregon terri- 
 toi-y, and establishes no barrier to the rights by 
 which we claim it. The assertion was originally 
 a mere dictum, now shown to be vmfounded. 
 
 The Senator from Maine has adverted likewise 
 to the treaty of 1763, as furnishing additional tes- 
 timony in favor of this line. That treaty merely 
 provides, that the confines lelween the Biitish and 
 French dominions shall be fixed irrevocably by a line 
 draion along the middle of the river Mississippi, from 
 its source, &fc. This is the whole provision that 
 bears upon this subject. I do not stop to analyze 
 it. That cannot be necessary. It is obvious that 
 this arrangement merely established tbe Mississippi 
 river as a boundary between the two countries, 
 leaving their other claims precisely as they for- 
 merly existed. And this, too, was fifteen years 
 before the voyage of Captain Cook, the com- 
 mencement of the British title on the northwest 
 coast. Briefly, sir, there are six reasons, which 
 prove that this ].iarallel was never established un- 
 der the treaty of Utrecht, so far at least as regards 
 Oregon. 
 
 1. It is not shown that any line was established 
 on the parallel of 49 to the Pacific ocean. 
 
 If the fact be so, the proper evidence is at Paris 
 or London, and should be produced. 
 
 2. The country on the northwestern coast was 
 then unknown, and I believe unclaimed; or, at any 
 rate, no circumstances had arisen to call in question 
 any claim to it. 
 
 3. The British negotiators in 1826, and their 
 Minister here in 1844, fixed, in effect, upon the 
 voyage of Captain Cook in 1778 as the commence- 
 ment of the British title in what is now called 
 Oregon. 
 
 4. The treaty of Utrecht provides for the estab- 
 lishment of a line between the French and English 
 colonies, including the Hudson Bay Company. 
 The British held nothing west of that company's 
 possessions, which, by the charter, includes only 
 the-" lands, countries, and territories, "on the wa- 
 ters running into Hudson's Bay. 
 
 5. If England established the line to the Pacific 
 ocean, she can have no claim south of it; and this 
 kind of argumentum ad hominem becomes con- 
 clusive. And, let me add, that I owe this argu- 
 ment to my friend from Missouri, [Mr. Atchison,] 
 to whose remarks upon Oregon the Senate listened 
 with profit and pleasure some days since. 
 
 6. How could France and England claim the 
 country to the Pacific, so as to divide it between 
 them in 1730, when, as late as 1790, the British 
 Government, by the Nootka convention, expressly 
 i-ecognised the Spanish title to that country, and 
 claimed only the use of it for its own subjects, in 
 common with those of Spain? 
 
 I now ask, sir, what right has any American 
 statesman , or what right has any British states- 
 man, to contend that our claim, whatever it may 
 be, is not just as good north of this line as it is 
 south of it? When this .qxiestion is answered to 
 

 
 my satisfaction, I, for one, will consent to stop 
 there. But until then, I am amon:^ those, who 
 mean to march, if we can, to the Russian boun- 
 dary. 
 
 Now, Mr. President, it is the very ground as- 
 sumed by the Senator from North Carolina, and 
 by other Senators, respecting this parallel of 49°, 
 together with the course of this discussion, which 
 furnishes me with the most poweiful argument 
 against the reference of this controversy to arbi- 
 tration. 
 
 I have shown, I trust, that there is no such line 
 of demarcation, established under the treaty of 
 Utrecht, extending to the Oregon territory, and 
 the misapprehension, whence the opinion arose. 
 
 While such a conviction prevailed, it was fairly 
 and properly assumed by the Government as the 
 northern boundary of the Oregon claim, before the 
 Florida treaty. Since that treaty I consider the 
 offers on our part as offers of compromise, not re- 
 cognitions of a line, from the resumption of nego- 
 tiations by Mr. Rush, who carried our title to 51°, 
 to their abandonment in 1827 by Mr. Gallatin, 
 who, finding a satisfactory adjustment impossible, 
 withdrew the pending offer, and asserted that his 
 Government " would consider itself at liberty to 
 contend for the full extent of the claims of the Uni- 
 ted States. " And for their full extent we do claim. 
 And I take the opportunity to tender my small 
 tribute of approbation to the general conduct of 
 these negotiations by the American Government, 
 and their commissioners, and especially to Mr. 
 Rush, a citizen as well known for his private worth 
 as for his high talents and great public services, and 
 who seems to have been the first, as Mr. Green- 
 how i-emarks, " to inquire cai-efully into the facts 
 of the case." 
 
 And it is not one of the least curious phases of 
 this controversy, that down to this very day the 
 pretensions of England are either wholly contradic- 
 tory, or are shrouded in apparently studied ob- 
 scurity. She asserts no exclusive claim anywhere, 
 but an equal claim everywhere. 
 
 " A right of joint occupancy in the Oregon terri- 
 ' tory," says the British Minister in his letter to 
 Mr. Calhoun, dated September 12, 1844, " of 
 ' which right she can be divested with respect to 
 ' any part of that territory, only by an equal parti- 
 ' tion of the ivhole between the parties." 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding he refers to the ivhole 
 territory, still, in the protocol of the conference at 
 Washington, dated September 24, 1844, he refused 
 to enter into any discussion respecting the country 
 north of 49°, because it u'os xinderstood by the Bntish 
 Government to form the basis of negotiation on the 
 part of the United States. Thus, on the 12tli of 
 September, recognising our right to an equal, un- 
 divided moiety of Oregon, and two v.reeks after 
 coolly claiming the nortliern half of it, as a fact not 
 even to be called into question, and then offering to 
 discuss with us the mutual claims of the two coun- 
 tries to the southern half! 
 
 Well, sir, influenced by the motives I have 
 stated, and by a desire to terminate this tedious 
 controversy, this parallel of 49°, sometimes with, 
 and sometimes without an accessory, has been 
 four times offered by us to the British Government, 
 and four times rejected, and once indignantly so; 
 and three times withdrawn. Twice withdrawii in 
 the^very terras — once by Mr. Gallatin, November 
 
 IS, 1826, who withdrew a proposition made by- 
 Mr. Rush, and once during the present Admin- 
 istration; and once withdrawn in effect, thou"-b 
 without the use of that word, by Mr. Gallatin,°in 
 1827, who announced to the British negotiator* 
 " that his Government did not hold itself bound 
 • hereafter, in consequence of any proposal, which 
 ' it had made for a line of separation between the- 
 ' ten-itories of the two nations beyond the Rocky 
 ' mountains; but would consider itself at liberty to 
 ' contend for the full extent of the claim.s of the 
 'United States." 
 
 The Senator from Louislaiia will perceive, that 
 he was in error yesterday, when he said, that no- • 
 offer of a compromise had ever been withdrawn^ 
 till the withdrawal made by the present Adminis- 
 tration, unless such offer had been announced as- 
 an ultimatum. But without recurring to any au- 
 thority upon this subject, it is evident, that if a 
 nation is forever bound by an oiler of compromise,, 
 no prudent nation would ever make such an offer. 
 Tliere would be no reciprocity in such a condition 
 of things. In controversies respecting territorj'^ 
 each party would hold on to its extreme limit; for 
 if it made an ofler less than that, it would aban- 
 don, in fact, so much of its own pretensions, leav- 
 ing those of its opponent in their full integrity. 
 
 Su'ch, sir, is the state of our controversy with 
 England; and yet honorable Senators upon this 
 floor, able lawyers and jurists also, maintain that 
 this line, thus offered, and refused, and withdrawn,. 
 is now in effect the limit of our claim, and that 
 we are bound honorably , and morally , and they say,, 
 at the risk of the censure of the world,, to receive it 
 it as our boundary whenever England chooses so to 
 accept it. This is all very strcuige, and would 
 seem to me so untenable, as not to be worthy of 
 examination, if it were not urged by such high au- 
 thorities. Let us look at it. 
 
 The honorable Senator from Maryland has en- 
 tered more fully into this branch of the subject 
 than any other member of this body, and I shall 
 therefore confine my inquiries to his remarks. 
 
 There are two propositions connected with this 
 matter, which it is proper to consider separately- 
 The first is, the obligation upon the President, 
 agreeably to his own views, to accept this rejected 
 offer, if it comes back to him; and the other is, the 
 obligation upon the country, and upon this body,, 
 as one of its depositaries of the treaty-making 
 power, to confirm the act of the President, s'.iould 
 it come here for confirmation. What, sir, is a 
 compromise .' It is an ofler made by one party to 
 the other to take less than his whole claim, M'ith a 
 view to an amicable adjustment of the controversy, 
 whatever this may be. The doctrine of compro- 
 mises is founded upon universal reason; and its 
 obligations, I believe, are everywhere the same, 
 whether in the codes of municipal or general law. 
 An offer made in this spirit never furnishes the 
 slightest presumption against the claim of the party 
 making it; and for the best of reasons, not only 
 t!;at this amicable process of settlement may be 
 encouraged and extended, but because it will often 
 happen, that both individuals and nations ma}'' be 
 willing to sacrifice a portion of what they consider 
 their just rights, rather than encounter the certain 
 expense and trouble, and the uncertain issue of 
 litigation, whether that litigation be in a court of 
 justice, or upon a battle-field,. Such is the genesal 
 
principle; and the practical operation of any otlier 
 would hold one of the parties forever bound, and 
 leave the other forever free. One makes his offer, 
 and must adhere to it, while the other declines it, 
 or refuses it, and still may hold on to it indefi- 
 nitely. 
 
 Surely it cannot be necessary to pursue this 
 illustration farther. Such a construction as this, 
 which plays fast and loose at the same time, carries 
 with it its own refutation, however respectable the 
 authority, which attempts to support it. But, revert- 
 ing to the obligation of the President, what says 
 the honorable Senator from Maryland ? He says 
 that the President — not James K. Polk, but the 
 Chief Magisti-ate of the nation — havhig felt an ira- 
 phed obligation to renew the offer of 49°, is now 
 bound in all time to accept it, and, I suppose, pa- 
 tiently to wait for it, till the demand comes. I 
 must say, that in this brief abstract of the Presi- 
 dent's views, the Senator has hardly done justice 
 to him. I do not stand here to say, what the Pres- 
 ident will do, should Great Britain propose to ac- 
 cept the parallel of 49° as the boundary between 
 the two countries. In the first place, it would be 
 to argue upon a gratuitous assumption . I have 
 not the slightest reason to believe, that the British 
 Government have given any intimation that it will 
 ever come back to that line. But, in the second 
 place, if it should, what then ? The incipient step 
 is for the President to take, and I should leave the 
 matter here, without remark, had not the Senator 
 from Maryland, and the Senator from North Car- 
 olina, and other Senators, labored to impress the 
 conviction, that the President ought, and must, and 
 would, close with the British proposition to accept 
 the parallel of 49°, should it be made. I shall not 
 analyze the words of the President's Message, but 
 content myself with a genex-al allusion to it. Truth 
 is seldom promoted by picking out particular 
 phrases, and placing them in juxtaposition. The 
 President says — and it is evident the whole 
 Message was carefully prepared — that though he 
 entertained the settled conviction, that the Brit- 
 ish title to any portion of Oregon could not 
 be maintained; yet, in deference to the action 
 of his predecessors, and to what had been done, 
 and in consideration, that the pending negotia- 
 tion had been commenced on the basis of compro- 
 mise, he determined, in a spirit of compromise, to 
 offer a part of what had been offered before — the 
 parallel of 49°, v/ithout the navigation of the Co- 
 lumbia river, 'He says this proposition was re- 
 jected, and in what terms we all know, and that 
 he immediately withdrew it, and then asserted 
 our title to the whole of Oregon, and maintained 
 it by irrefragable arguments. Now, sir, I am 
 not going to argue with any man, who seeks to 
 deduce from this language a conviction in the mind 
 of the President, that he considers himself under 
 the slightest obligation to England to accept the 
 parallel of 49°, should she desire it as a boundary. 
 In this account of his proceedings, he is explain- 
 ing to his countrymen the operations of his own 
 mind, the reasons which induced him to make 
 this offer, made, as he says, "in deference alone 
 to what had been done by my predecessors, and 
 the implied obligations their acts seemed to im- 
 pose." What obligations? None to England, 
 for none had been created; but the obligations im- 
 posed upon a prudent statesman to look at the 
 
 actions and views of his predecessors, and not to 
 depart from them without good reasons. The ob- 
 vious meaning is this: I found the negotiations 
 pending; after an interval of almost twenty years, 
 they had been renewed; they began on the basis 
 of compromise, and though three times a compro- 
 mise had been offered to England and rejected, 
 and though she had not the slightest right to claim, 
 or even to expect it would be offered to her again, 
 and though I determined, that the same proposi- 
 tion should not be offered to her, still, as a proof 
 of the moderation of the United States, I deemed 
 it expedient to make her another offer, less than 
 the preceding one, which a quarter of a century 
 before she had rejected. A curious obligation 
 this, if it has reference to the rights of England, 
 and a curious mode of fulfilling it ! If he (the 
 President) were under any obligation to her, the 
 obligation was complete, to make the offer as it had 
 been made before. And she has the same right 
 to claim the navigation of the Columbia river, that 
 she has to claim the parallel of 49° as a boundary; 
 and the honorable Senator from Louisiana has 
 placed the matter upon this very ground. As- 
 suming, that the obligation referred to by the 
 President was an obligation to England, he thinks 
 the President failed in his duty in not carrying out 
 his own views of the national duties. 
 
 Why, sir, if offers of compromise were to be 
 made till doomsday, the rights of both parties would 
 remain in their integrity. And what offer creates 
 this implied obligation ? Several offers have been 
 made by our Government to that of England for 
 the adjustment of this controversy. Which creates 
 this obligation, one of them, or all of them.' But 
 it is very clear, sir, that neither of them creates it. 
 The common-sense view of this subject is the true 
 one in this case, as in most other cases. The party 
 offering says to its adversary, I will consent to that 
 line. If you consent to it, our controversy will be 
 amicably adjusted. The only obligation created 
 by this act is, to allow reasonable time to the other 
 party for decision, and then faithfully to adhere to 
 the terms, should they be accepted. If unreason- 
 ably delayed, still more if rejected, both parties are 
 thrown back upon their original position, unem- 
 barrassed by this attempt at conciliation. 
 
 But, sir, the President is a judge of his own duties. I am 
 not afraid to leave them with him — they are in safe keep- 
 ing. Should the ((uestion respecting this parallel ever be 
 presented to him for decision, I have a perfect conviction, 
 that whether he decide for it or against it, or refer it to the 
 consideration of the Senate, he will fulfil his responsible 
 duties with a eonseientious regard to the high obligations 
 hs is under to the country and to the Constitution. But we, 
 too, have duties to perform, and among these may be the 
 necessity of deciding for ourselves tlie nature and extent of 
 this obligation upon the nation. 
 
 I do not speak now of any considerations of expediency, 
 wliieh may operate upon the decision of this matter. There 
 are none which will operate upon me. But I assume to 
 myself no right to prescribe the course of others, whether of 
 the President or of the Senate, or to judge it when taken. 
 But 1 reject this doctrine of a national obligation to England. 
 I deny the right of any one to commit the faith of this coun- 
 try to a rejected line — to bind us, leaving our opponent un- 
 bound — to convert a mere offer of compromise into the sur- 
 render of a claim ; to change the established opinions and 
 usages of the world upon tliis subjoet. It seems to me, that 
 a cause cannot be strong which needs such auxiUaries for 
 its support. 
 
 But, sir, this doctrine, as I before observed, and the course 
 of the remarks by which it is endeavored to maintain it, 
 furnish to me conclusive arguments against the reference of 
 this controversy to arbitration. Here, at home, in this co- 
 ordinate branch of the national legislature, we are told, and 
 
8 
 
 almost ex cathedra too. that we have concluded ourselves, 
 by tliis offer of 49°, and that upon tliat paralUl nuisi lie our 
 boundary, when England makes up her mind to come to it. 
 Now, in this state of the matter, what would be the effict 
 of an arbitration .' The Secretary of State, in his answer to 
 the Briti.-h Minister, has ably and truly exposed the ten- 
 dency of this process of adjustmeut, whether public or pri- 
 vate. Its tendency is not to settle the actual rights of the 
 parties, but to compromise them. To divide, and not to 
 decide. We all know this, and he who runs may read it in 
 the history of almost every arbitration, within the circle of 
 his observation. Though, as I have already said, the otlcrs 
 of compromise we have made to England ought not to furnish 
 the slightest prctsumptiou against the validity of our whole 
 claim, and would not,before any well-regulated judicial tribu- 
 nal in Christendom, yetcommitour cause to arbitration, and 
 where are we .? We might as well throw to the winds all the 
 facts, and arguments, and illustrations, upon which we bui;d 
 our claim, and say to the arbitrators, do as you please, we aje 
 at your mercy. For this they would do at any rate. They 
 would not lieed your views, but they would turn to the history 
 of tlie controversy, and to the course of the parties. They 
 would measure what each had offered, and would split tbe 
 difference to the ninth part of a hair. They would assume, 
 that the American claim goes to the 49th parallel, and tlie 
 British claim to the Columbia river; and they would add, 
 and subtract, and multiply, and divide, till all this process 
 would end in a tolerably equal partition of what no one 
 upon this floor denies, and what every American, or almost 
 every American, as firmly believes makes part of his coun- 
 try, as does the tomb at Mount Vernon, or the grave at 
 tlie Hermitage, where countless generations of men will 
 come as to places of pilgrimage— not, indeed, to worship, 
 bat to think upon the days and the deeds of the patriots 
 and warriors, who sleep below. You could not find a 
 sovereign nor a subject, a State nor a citizen in Christ- 
 endom, who, in such a controversy between two great 
 nations, would not rather decide with the dividers, than 
 with the titles. Well, sir, I agree fully, that if we wish 
 to get rid of all this matter vvithout regard to the why 
 or the how, we may safely commit it to the custody of arbi- 
 trators. Their decision, though we should know it before- 
 hand, might be considered a plaster for our wounded honor. 
 A poor one, indeed, which would leave a most unsightly 
 scar. But, in reality, sir, this course of action would be 
 open and obvious to ourselves and to the world. Its motives 
 and its results would be equally palpable. We should lose 
 much in interest, and much more in character. For myself, 
 I would far rather divide with England this portion of the 
 territory, tlian commit our rights to arbitiation. There 
 would be some magnanimity in such a procedure. But to 
 take shelter behind this form of trial is to resort to a misera- 
 ble subterfuge, which, under the prete.xt of an equal adjust- 
 ment, would be but a surrender. If, then, we se/iously be- 
 lieve in our own claims, even to 49°, and sincerely desire to 
 maintain them, we must unite in approving the rejection, by 
 the President, of this pacific means of transfening to England 
 a valuable part of our common country. 
 
 Mr. President, the honorable Senator from North Carolina, 
 not now in his seat, called tliose, who believe our title to 
 54° 40' to be clear, the ultra friends of the President, and, I 
 understood him, he claimed to be his true friend, saving him 
 from those imprudent ones. As I find myself in this cate- 
 gory, I am obnoxious to the charge, and with the natural 
 instinct of self-defence, I desire to repel it. We are ultra 
 friends, because we do not stop at 49°. I have already shown, 
 that there is no stopping- place on that parallel — no true rest 
 for an American foot. The Senator himself considers our 
 title to that line clear and indisputable, and I understood 
 him that he would maintain it, come what might. Well, 
 if it is found that the treaty of Utrecht no more extended to 
 Oregon than to the moon, whatever other boundary may 
 be sought or found, it cannot be that purely gratuitous boun- 
 dary — the parallel of 49°. And as the Senator from North 
 Carolina must leave it, where mil he find a better barrier 
 than the Russian possessions.' But he says, also, that though 
 our title to the country north of 49° is not indisputable, still 
 it is better than any other title. Now, I will appeal to the 
 Senator's charity — no, not to his charity, that is not necessary 
 — but I will appeal to his sense of justice, to say, whether 
 such a difference of opinion as exists between himself and 
 me on this subject can justly be characterized as ultraism on 
 my part. Our title, he says, is the best — not indisputable ; but 
 still the best. The same evidence, which produced this con- 
 viction in his mind, produces a stronger one in mine; and 
 this is tlie tribute, which every day's experience pays to hu- 
 man fallibility. We are differently constituted, and differ- 
 ently affected by the same facts and arguments. While the 
 honorable Senator stands upon the parallel of 49°, as tlie pre- 
 
 cise line, where our questionable and unquestionable titles 
 meet, tliere aregniany, and I am amung the number, who 
 carry our unquestionable title to tbe Russian boundary in 
 one direction, and some, i)i'rhaps. though I have not found 
 one,. who carry it in another direction tj the Columbia river. 
 It seems to me in bad taste, to say the least of it, for any 
 member to assume his own views as infallible, and to say to 
 all the worid, who ditf;trfroin lihn, whether on the right hand 
 or on the left, My opinion is the trut' standard of orthodoxy^ 
 and everyone, who d::parts from it is a heretic and a.n ultra. 
 Thus to stigmatize a large portion of the Senate, is not, I am 
 sure, the intention of the Senator; but such is, in fact and 
 effect, the direct tendency of his remarks. We are ultra, 
 because, to use a somewhat quaint but a forcible apothegm, 
 we u-ill not meastcrc our corn l/y Ais bushel. Why, sir, we 
 have each a bushel of our own, given us by the Creator, and 
 till the Senator's is sealed and certiiied by a higher author- 
 ity, we beg leave to keep our own, and to measure our 
 duties by it. 
 
 I did not understand the precise object of some of the re- 
 marks of the Senator from North Caroiina,thnugh I had less 
 difficulty respecting tlie remarks themselves. He told us 
 the President nowhere claimed 54° 40'; and I presume he 
 thus contended in order to show that the President might 
 consistently accept any boundary south of that parallel. I 
 again disclaim all interference with the President in the ex- 
 ecution of his duties. I do not think, that what he will do 
 in a gratuitous case, should furnish the subject ol' specula- 
 tion upon this floor. I know what I will do, and that is 
 enough for me ; and as I took the opportunity, three years 
 ago, in a public and printed address, at Fort Wa} ne, to de- 
 fine my position in this matter, before I became a member 
 of this body, my allusion to it here cannot be deemed the 
 premature expression of my opinion. I then said : 
 
 " Our claim to the country west of the Rocky mountains 
 ' is as undeniable as our right to Bunker's Hill and New 
 ' Orleans ; and who will call in question our title to these 
 ' blood-stained fields ? And I ti ust it will be maintained 
 ' with a vigor and promptitude equal to its justice. War is 
 ' a great evil, but not so great as national dishonor. Little 
 ' is gained by yielding to insolent and unjust pretensions. 
 ' It is better to defend the first inch of territory than thejast. 
 ' Far better, in dealing with England, to resist aggression, 
 'whether of impressment, of search, or of territory, when 
 ' first attempted, than to yield in the hope, that forbearance 
 ' will be met in a just spirit, and will lead to an amicable 
 ' compromise. Let us have no red lines upon tlie map of 
 ' Oregon. Let us hold on to the integrity of our just claim. 
 'And if war come, be it so ; I do not believe it will be long 
 ' avoided, unless prevented by intestine difliculties in tlie 
 ' Britii^h Empire. And wo be to us, if we flatter ourtelves it 
 ' can be arre-ted by any system of concession. Of all delu- 
 ' sions, this would be the most fatal, and we should awake 
 ' from it a dishonored, if not a ruined people." 
 
 Now the Oregon I claim, is all Oregon, and no vote of 
 mine in this Senate will surrender one inch of it to England. 
 But tlie Senator from North Carolina says, that the Oregon 
 the President claims is an Oregon of his own, and not tlie 
 country, which now excites the anxious solicitude of the 
 American people. And if it were so, is it the duty of a 
 friend, I may almost say claiming to be an exclusive one, to 
 hold up to his countrymen the W'ord of promise of their 
 Chief Magristrate, thus kept to the ear, but not to the hope ? 
 But it is not so. The honorable Senator has been led uito 
 an error — ;i palpable error. The Preside«t says the British 
 pretensions could not be maintained to any 'portion of the 
 Oregon territory. He says, also, tliat our title to the whole 
 of the Oregon territory is maintained by irrefragable facts 
 and arguments. He says British laws have been extended 
 throughout the whole of Oregon. Now, sir, has any man a 
 right to s!iy, tliat the President falters in his purpose, by 
 talking of the whole of a country, when he does not mean 
 the whole of it.' No, sir ; the idea never occurred to him, 
 never crossed his mind. VVhen he said Oregon, he meant 
 so ; and I have no more doubt, than I have of my existence, 
 that be believes as firmly in the American title to it, as he 
 believes he is now the Chief Magistrate of the United 
 States. 
 
 If it were possible, that this proposition needed support, 
 it would be easily found. The communications of tlie Sec- 
 retary of State, are the communications of the President, 
 written by his direction and submitted for his approbation, 
 and never sent without his supervision, and very seldom, I 
 imagine, without emendations by him. The correspondence 
 with the British Minister, laid before us at the commence- 
 ment of the session, was doubly his. His, because carried 
 on by his Secretary of State, with a foreign Government, 
 and his because communicated to Congress and his country, 
 as the depository of his views and measures. Well, sir, in 
 
9 
 
 e letter from the Secretarj' of State to Mr. Pakenham, da- 
 d July 12, 1845, Mr. Buchanan says: 
 " Upon the whole, from tlie most careful and ample ex- 
 mination which the undersigned has been able to bestow 
 ipon the subject, he Is satisfied that the Spanish American 
 itle now held by the United States, embracing the whole 
 territory between the paraUels of 42 degrees and 54 degrees 
 lO minutes, is the best title in existence to this entire re- 
 ^on," &c. 
 And he adds . 
 
 '• Notwithstanding such was and still is the opinion of the 
 resident," &c. 
 
 Human words and human deeds are worthless to disclose 
 iraan opinions, if the Oregon of the President is not tlie 
 regon we claim and hope to secure. 
 
 The Senator from North Carolina has presented to us some 
 culiar views of the President's position and duties, and has 
 tduced his futm-e com-se, not from his Message, but from 
 •.trinsic circumstances, acts of omission and of commission, 
 he calls them, by which the language of the President is 
 be conti-olled,and his further course in this controversy 
 gulated. I doubt the propriety, as well as the wisdom, of 
 1 tiiis, either as regards the President, the Senate, or the 
 iuntry. If successful in his declarations or expositions, 
 hichcver they may be, I do not see what practical advaa- 
 ge the Senator expected to gain. The President would 
 ill have to perform his own duties, and we to psrform ours, 
 ithout reference to the embarrassments created by tliis 
 )vel mode of reading the past views and tlie future course 
 tlie Chief Magistrate. In the mean time, what better plan 
 mid be devised to excite the public mind, and to rouse sus- 
 cions, which would fly upon tlie wings of the wind to the 
 rthest verge of the countiy .' No such intention ever en- 
 red the mind of the honorable Senator ; but I submit to 
 m, if, in its very nature, this process is not calculated to 
 ;oduce such a result, and whether, in fact, it has not pro- 
 iced it. And yet, it seems to me, that the reasons in sup- 
 )rt of it are utterly insufficient to justify the conclusions. 
 M^hat are these reasons .' I will just touch some of tlieni, 
 iving no time to pursue the subject. 
 
 There were two acts of commission: one wastheofFer he- 
 re made of the parallel of 49° as a compromise ; and the 
 her was the expression of Mr. Buchanan in his last letter 
 the British Minister, dated August 30th, 1845, that the 
 resident hoped the controversy would be terminated with- 
 it a collision. 
 
 Now, sir, as to the first. I trust I have shown, that what- 
 'er course the President may pursue respecting the parallel 
 ■ 49°, as a boundary hereafter, his duty will be before him, 
 lembarrassed by the offer heretofore made, and that, conse- 
 lently, that circumstance is no key to unlock the hidden 
 ture. 
 
 And as to tlie second. I will ask the honorable Senator 
 upon reflection, he thinks the expression of the President's 
 )pc is really entitled to this grave consideration. 
 It seems to me partly a polite and courteous phrase, and 
 irtly the sincere declai'ation of a wish, that some mode 
 ight be devised for an amicable adjustment of this matter, 
 et us not deprive diplomatists of that hope, vs'hicli carries 
 ! all forward to the bright recompense of the future. But 
 t us not convert tlie expression of it into solid promises, 
 ir settled convictions. 
 
 And what are the acts of omission ? One is the neglect to 
 commend defensive measures, and the other is a want of 
 \nfidenc3 in the chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
 slatious. 
 
 And now for tlie first. I presume ere this the honorable 
 jnator is aware, that he has entirely misunderstood the 
 ews of the Pre.«ident upon this subject. In his Mes- 
 .ge, at the commencement of the session, the President 
 commended that a force of mounted riflemen should be 
 .ised, and also an augmentation of the naval means of the 
 )uutry. But later in the session, in conformity with reso- 
 tions which originated here, recommendations and esti- 
 ates, seen and approvjd by the President, and his in fact, 
 jreeably to the constitution of our Executive department, 
 ere sent, by the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, to the 
 oper committees of the Senate. A bill was reported by 
 e Naval Committee for an additional steam force, and was 
 )ly and vigorously advocated by the honorable chairman of 
 lat committee. ISut it was put to sleep, partly, if not prin- 
 pally, I believe, upon the ground that, if you cannot im- 
 ediately equip a na\'y, therefore you must not build a ship; 
 idif 3-ou do not require an army, therefore you must not raise 
 regiment. And the result may well have been taken as an 
 idication both by the Naval and Military Committees, that 
 le Senate did not deem an augmentation of the defensive 
 leans of the country necessary mider the circumstances, 
 nd therefore prevented all further action on their part, as 
 seless. For I consider the proposition of tlie Navcil Com- 
 
 mittee, thus put to sleep, one of the least objectionable of 
 all the measures subiiiitted to us under the sanction of the 
 President. I have looked over these estimates, sir, both 
 from tlie War and Navy' Departments, and I consider them 
 proper and judicious, in the existing state of our relations 
 vritli England ; and I will add, the heads of both of those 
 departments dischai-ged thtdr responsible duties — for their 
 duties were responsible — in a satisfactory manner. 
 
 A brief recapitulationmaynotbe miacceptable, nor unpro- 
 fitable. 
 
 The Secretary of War recommended the immediate pas- 
 sage of a bill for the new works. 
 
 An appropriation of $300,000 for the fortification and ob- 
 struction of channels; and also for field works. 
 
 An appropriation of .f 100,000 for geneial contingencies in 
 the field, including the preparation of a pontoon equipage. 
 
 An estimate of the sum of $5,000,000, as necessary for 
 fortifications and obstructions, to be appropriated when 
 Congress might think the aspect of affairs threatened hos- 
 tilities, and then to be placed at the disposition of the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 The estimate for ordnance and ordnance stores amounted 
 to $4,279,680— of course to be appropriated as Congress 
 might deem proper. 
 
 An addition to the army of so many privates as would 
 raise each company to 100 men, thus adding 7,960 men to the 
 army. 
 
 Authority to the President to raise 50,000 volunteers, to 
 be called into tlie pubUc service for one year, whenever re- 
 quired. 
 
 The propositions respecting fortifications and ordnance 
 came from the proper bureaus, and the proposition for an 
 augmentation of the army and a volunteer force came from 
 the commanding general, vi'hose high character and gallant 
 services in the field, justly give great weight to his opinions; 
 and those propositions were assumed by the Secretary, and 
 he became responsible for them. 
 
 The Secretary of the Navy recommended an accumulation 
 of naval materials and stores to tlie amount of $1,060,000. 
 
 For the repair and equipment of all the vessels in ordina- 
 ry, and of the frigates of the United States, $2,145,000. 
 
 For three steam-frigates, five steam-sloops, and two steam- 
 ers of a smaller class, $3,310,000. 
 
 Naval ordnance and stores, $360,000. 
 
 How these estimates were prepared in the Navy Depart- 
 ment, the document in my possession does not show. I 
 presume they went through the proper bureaus. They came 
 to the Senate, however, as the act of the Secretary. 
 
 It is obvious that all these appropriations, in any contin- 
 gency, would not be wanted for some time ; and, indeed, 
 that the full legislative action upon the subject would await 
 the developments growing out of our foreign relations. Or- 
 dinary prudence requires that a commencement should be 
 immediately made ; to what extent, Congress must judge. 
 But it will be remarked, that much the larger portion of 
 these estimates is for materials and supplies, which we must 
 have, some time or other, and ought to have ere long, let 
 the aspect of our foreign affairs be as it may. 
 
 In making this provision, we but anticipate our necessi- 
 ties, and the worst that can happen will be, that we shall be 
 sooner prepared for a state of things, for which we ought to 
 be always prepared. 
 
 As to the mode of receiving this information, it has been 
 sanctioned by the practice of the Government for years. 
 Congress and its committees have been in the daily habit of 
 calling upon the heads of the departments for the necessary 
 facts and views in the discharge of their legislative duties. 
 And, in all cases like the present, the reports "are submitted 
 to the President before being sent here, and thus receive his 
 sanction, and they are often changed by his directions. This 
 is well known to all, who are acquainted with theroutme of 
 our executive department. 
 
 To return now, sir, to this act of omission, this neglect to 
 recommend proper measures of defence, by which the Pres- 
 ident's ^iews are to be interpreted, as I understand, in tliis 
 manner. The President recommends no measui-es of de- 
 fence. Therefore he considers the comitry in no danger. 
 Therefore he intends to yield to the parallel of 49°, which 
 the British Government intends to demand ; and thus there 
 will be no war. Now, sir, more than two months before 
 this position was taken by the honorable Senator, the Pres- 
 ident had recommended by his Secretaries an addition to 
 the army of almost 8,000 men, the organization of 50,000 
 volunteers, the removal of the lunitations respecting naval 
 establishments, that he might be able to direct such an aug- 
 mentation of the seamen of the navy as circumstances might 
 require, and appropriations for military purposes to the 
 amount of §9,679,680 ; and for naval purposes to the amount 
 of $6,515,000— making in the whole $16,195,580, in addition 
 to the recommendations in Ms Message at the commence- 
 
10 
 
 meiit of the session, and to the ordinaiy estimates of the 
 department. 
 
 It is unnecessary to pursue this topic. What 'vor may be 
 the just construction of the President's nieaninij, which to 
 me is e.xceidingly ciear, it is now obvious that this act of 
 omission bccouios an act of commission, and proves that 
 the Pre.-idont is by no means tranquil respectiug the con- 
 dition of the country. 
 
 As to tlie alleged want of Executive confidence in the 
 chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, I hardly 
 know how to speak of it becoiiungly, when urged in this 
 connexion. Were the fact so, it would seem very .-trange 
 to me, and I should think the President very badly advised, 
 to withhold a proper confidence from one of his truest and 
 most efficient friends upon tills floor, and one, too, who, 
 from his position at the head of a most important commit- 
 tee, was officially entitled to it. 
 
 No one, who has witnessed the energy, the talent, and the 
 promptitude of the honorable ehainiiau. can doubt the ser- 
 vice he has rendered this Administration', nor the confidence 
 he deserves — a confidence, indeed, demanded more for the 
 sake of the public interest, than for his own sake. 
 
 But, sir, I have reason to know that the Senator from 
 North Cardlina is in error in all this ; tliat tljis deduction 
 from extrinsic circumstances is but anotlier proof, that truth 
 is not always attained when sought by indirect and remote 
 facts. I have reason to know, that the chairman of the Com- 
 mittee on Foreign Relations communicates freely with tiie 
 President, and enjoys his confidence. 
 
 And what proof of estrangement between these high func- 
 tionaries is furnished by the honorable Senator from North 
 Carolina.' Why, thus stands the case : The honorable chair- 
 man stated that the opuiionsof the Presidenthad undergone 
 no change; but being interrogated upon the subject, he an- 
 swereil, that the records, and the records alone, were the 
 sources of his information. 
 
 It seems to me it would better become our position if we 
 all sougln the views of the President, so far as we ougiit to 
 seek them, in the same authentic documents. It would 
 save a world of unprofitable conjecture. Now, sir, what 
 does all this amount to.' Why, to tliis: the President told 
 the Senator from Ohio no more, as to his future course than 
 he told the country and Congress in his Message. It would 
 be strange if he had. The avowal of a line of policy, when 
 the proper circumstances are before him, is the duty of a 
 sound and practical statesman. But I should much doubt 
 the wi:dom of the Chief Magistrate of a great country, who 
 should sit down to speculate upon future and remote contin- 
 gencies, affecting the public welfare, with a view even to the 
 decision upon his own course, and stiU less with a view to 
 its annunciation to the world. 
 
 Let me, then, ask the Senator, if he thinks it is the duty 
 of the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations to 
 put gratuitous questions to tiie President, in order tliat he 
 may be able to come here and declare what the Executive 
 will do in such and such a contingency, which may never 
 happen ; or which, if it do happen, may bring with it cir- 
 cumstances, that may change the whole aspect of the ques- 
 tion .' But I forbear, sir. I consider it unnecessary to pur- 
 sue this question further. 
 
 A considerable portion of the argument of the Senator 
 from North Carolina was devoted to prove that the Message 
 of the President did not justify these anticipations of war, 
 which it api)ears to myself andto other Senators to do. Not 
 tliat he called in question the natural tendency of the meas- 
 ures recommended by the President, nor the fair construc- 
 tion of his language ; but he controlled these by tlie extrinsic 
 facts to which I have advert"d. I shall say nothing more 
 upon this subject, but I shall fortify my own opinion by the 
 views of other members of this body, who are entitled to 
 more weight than I am. 
 
 The honorable Senator from South'Carolinasaid "thatUie 
 recommendation in tlie Message is founded upon the con- 
 viction, that there is no hope of compromise of the difficul- 
 ties growing out of the President's Message is too clear to 
 admit of any doubt." 
 
 After some further remark.s, showing the opinions enter- 
 tained of the dangers of war, he adds : " Entertaining those 
 opinions, we were compelled to oppose notice, because it 
 was necessary to prevent an appeal to arms, aud insure the 
 peaceful settlement of the question." 
 
 And the Senator from Maryland said : " We have all felt, 
 Mr. President, tiiat atone time at least — I trust tliat time is 
 past — the nation was in imminent danger. From the mo- 
 ment that the President of the United States deemed it 
 right and becoming, in the very outset of his official career, 
 to announce to the world that the title to the northwest 
 territory was clear and indisputable, down to his Mes- 
 sage in December last, I could not see how war was to be 
 averted." 
 
 And tlie honorable Senator from Louisiana, in his speed! 
 yesterday, advanced the same opinion upon this subject. 
 
 And the Senator from Georgia also expressed the convic 
 tion that " tliis resolution, based as it is on the President': 
 Message, is a distinct intimation to Groat Britain that thi; 
 matter must be settled, and in a manner acceptable to us, o 
 that at the expiration of that time we will take forcible pos 
 session of the whole country," which of course meansi 
 war. 
 
 And he adds that "the Senator from North Carolina tell: 
 us, that the President is waiting at the open doorof hiscabi 
 net, ready to adjust this controversy, and to preserve tin 
 peace of the country." " Sir," he adds, " even with the aii 
 of the Senator's optics, I cannot see him there." And hn 
 adds also, if these things w:'re so, referring to the view.j o< 
 the Senator from North Carolina respecting the President':' 
 Message, " I should be sorry to do so." And I fully concuii' 
 nith him in the sentiment. 
 
 Now, sir, I shall not thrust myself into this dispute — 
 
 " Non nostrum inter vos tantas componcre lites." 
 During the progress of this discussion, the blessings c 
 peace and the horrors of war have been frequently presente > 
 to us with the force of truth, and sometimes with the fet( 
 veney of an excited imagination. I have listened attentivell 
 to all this, though much of it I remember to have hear r 
 thirty-five years ago. But I beg honorable Senators to recoli 
 lect, that upon this side of the chamber we have interest:! 
 and families, and homes, and a country, as well as the 
 have; and that we are as little disposed to bring war upo 
 our native land, unnecessarily, as they can be. That somi 
 of us know by experience, all of us by reading and reflen 
 tion, the calamities, moral and physical, tliat war brings ii 
 its train. And we appreciate the blessings of peace wilhii 
 conviction as deep and as steadfast. And no one desires i i 
 continuance more eaniestly than I do. But all this leave 
 untouched the only real subject of inquiry. That is n<i 
 whether peace is a blessing and war a curse, but whethi 
 peace can be preserved, and war avoided, consistently wit 
 the honor and interest of the country. That question mri 
 come up for solution ; and if it does, it must be met by eac 
 one of us, with a full sense of its abiding importance, and i 
 his own responsibility. I suppose there is not a gentlemB-: 
 in this body, who will not say, tliat cases may occur, even j 
 this stage of the world, which may drive this country to tM 
 extreme remedy of war, rather than she should submit 
 arrogant and unreasonable demands, or to direct attacl 
 upon our rights and independence — like impressment, or tli 
 search of our ships, or various other acts, by which pow 
 is procured and maintained over the timid and the weaa 
 The true practical question for a nation is not the cost 
 war, whether measured by dollars, or by dangers, or by diii 
 asters, hut whether war can be honorably avoided ; and thi 
 question each person having the power of determinatic 
 must determine for himself, when tlie case is presente 
 Good men may indulge in day-dreams upon this subj^;( 
 but he who looks upon the world as it has been, as it is, an 
 as it is hkely to be, must see that the moral constitutid 
 of man has undergone little change ; and that interests an 
 passions operate not less upon communities, than they d' 
 when tlie law of public might was the law of public rigl 
 more openly avowed than now. Certainly a healthful pub ' 
 opinion exerts a stronger influence over the world,than at a 
 former period of its history. Governments are more or less i 
 stiained by it, and all feel the effects of it. Mistresses, and ■ 
 vorites, and minions, no longer drive nations to war, nor n 
 mere questions of etiquette among the avowed causes of Ik 
 tilities. It is not probable, that a people will ever be agr 
 overcome, because a statesman may consult his vanity rati ' 
 than his taste in the choice of his pictures, nor that tiio st;i 
 of Europe will be changed because a lady's silk gown m 
 be spoiled by a cup of tea. Humanity has gained sonii 
 thing — let us hope it \\ill gain more. Questions of war ; ; 
 passing from cabinets to the people. If they are discuss 
 in secret, they are also discussed before the world, for iIkk 
 is not a Government in Christendom, which would dare 
 rush into war, unless that measure were sanctioned by t| 
 state of public feeling. Still, let us not deceive ourselv , 
 Let us not yet convert our swords into ploughshares, nor c 
 spears into pruning-hooks, nor neglect the maritime and n 
 itary defences of the country, lulled by the syren song 
 peace, peace, when there may be no peace. I am afraid • 
 have not grown so much wiser and better, than our fathe 
 as many good people suppose. I do not discern upon 1 
 horizon of the future the first dawn of the millenium. 1 
 eagle and the lion will not always lie down in peace togeth 
 Nations are yet subject to human passions, and are too oft 
 their victims. The Government, which should say, I v 
 not defend myself by force, would soon have nothing to i 
 fend. An honorable Senator quoted a remark I made so: 
 
 m 
 
 ID III 
 
 tan 
 
 mi 
 
11 
 
 ' me since— I will not say with a sneer, but with an appear- 
 ace of disappi-obation— that it was better to defend the first 
 ich of national terdtory than the last. Does the honorable 
 enator believe in the converse of this proposition ? — that it 
 
 '"I better to defend the last inch of territory than the first? 
 
 "' f he does, I sincerely tiust, as well for his own sake as for 
 
 '^ 16 sake of his country, that he may never be driven to cor- 
 
 * bet his error in the school of experience. What, however, 
 le Senator from New Jersey did not do, the Senator from 
 
 ™ forth Carolina has done. He sneers at territorial as well 
 '' s jiairiotic inches ; he means a " line in substance, noi erery 
 
 * ich." " I do not measure my own or other people's patri- 
 ?' tism by the inch." "How one's American blood boils at 
 "fie thought of ceding inches. ' ' He does not tell us by what 
 '''tandardhe would measure the soil of the Republic, or the 
 Hiatriotism of lier people. It is evident that he does not be- 
 •'" ieve that wise old saying, " Give a man an inch, and he wijl 
 
 ike an ell." Give a nation a small strip, and it will demand 
 larger one. To attempt to purchase safety by concession 
 3 to build a bridge of gold, not for a retreating, but for an 
 dvancing enemy. Nations are like the daughters of the 
 *lorse-leech ; they cry, "give, give." It is idle, sir, to array 
 !6'lurselves against the powerful instincts of human nature; 
 " nd he, who is dead to their influence, will find as little sym- 
 'Ij atliy in this ageof theworld, ashe would Iiave found had he 
 "< [ved in t"8e ages that are passed. If we suffer ourselves to 
 ol e trodden upon, to be degraded, to be despoiled of our good 
 ^ISiame and our rights, under the pretext that war is unworthy 
 i«! if us or our time, we shall find ourselves in the decrepitude 
 *nf age, before we have passed the period of manhood. 
 "i i A great deal has been said in England, and not a little in 
 K lie United States, respecting our grasping propensity in dc- 
 i banding the whole of Oregon; and we have been solemnly 
 i Idmonished of the awful'responsibility of involving two great 
 illations in war. The subject in dispute is said not to be 
 
 II kforih the perils a conflict would bring with it; and the lion- 
 ii((rable Senator from Maine has exhibited to us, as in a bal- 
 ls Ince, the disasters of war, and the value of the matter in 
 lil onlroversy, and has made our territorial claims to kick the 
 
 III leam. Permit me to turn to the other side of this picture. 
 >t acknowledge the moral obligation of Governments to avoid 
 It 'yar, where higher obligations do not drive them to it. I will 
 Bi lot call England the Pharisee of nations, but I will say that 
 li he does not hide the light of her own good deeds under a 
 111 bushel. The ocean scarcely beats upon a shore within sight 
 lUf which her flag is not seen, and within sound of which 
 iCi ier drum is not heard. And yet her moderation is proclaim- 
 Ibld, and often with the sound of her cannon, from one end 
 »'i if the civilized world to the other. She is not like other na- 
 ;al io7i-?, and least of all, like that great !(raspins; inohocracy of 
 1U%^ West. "I thank God," said the Pharisee of old, "that 
 it am not as other men are." Now the chapter of accidents 
 Ik; las turned up favorably for England, if she will accept the 
 lio ipportunity afforded her. No man in this country wants 
 !(• va;- — idtraiits no more than compromisists,H I may use terms 
 ( u- tilled by the occasion. The extreme partisan of decisive 
 a iie:;sujes asks nothing but the whole of Oregon. Give him 
 lio hat, and he will become as meek as the latest professor of 
 aiiumility, who writes homilies upon national moderation 
 dibr the London Times. Now, sir, let England abandon her 
 ;li irc'tensions, and all these disasters, the consequences of war, 
 lilivhich are foretold — and I do not doubt many of them just- 
 jiiy foretold — will give way, and exist only in the memory of 
 ir.his debate. There is no condition of things, foreseen by 
 Itliiiy man, public or private, in this country, which can 
 ai!ive to England a better line, than 49°. The country north 
 kiijf that line is therefore all she could gain by a contest, 
 giivhich is to involve the fearful consequences predicted 
 iiii both countries; which during its progress, it is said, will 
 ilairing nation after nation within the sphere of its opera- 
 miion, and which is finally to commit to the decision of the 
 giword the great question of free government through the 
 
 a kvorid, by placing in its path the antagonistic principle, that 
 51 he many should be governed by the few. What, then, 
 IK tvould England surrender to preserve the peace of the world, 
 ,c md tlius give the first practical proof of moderation to be 
 ll'ound in fhe long annals of her history.' I agree fully with 
 lve>he honorable Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Atchison,] that 
 [0 if England would acknowledge our rights, and withdraw her 
 m apposition to them, and should then ask a better access to 
 ,j Jie ocean for her interior territories, I would grant it with- 
 j'j put hesitation, as a favor, upon the most reasonable consid- 
 jfisration. If this should be done, she would have left about 
 III three hundred miles of coast to fight for; and I will return 
 Tithe question of the gentleman from Maine, and ask if this 
 iliptrip of land is worth the price of such a contest? England 
 ifiiis already gorged with possessions, both continental and in- 
 jsular, overrun, almost overloaded with subjects of all castes, 
 jjcolors, and condition. At this very moment, she is waging 
 ijU two wars of aggrandizement — one for commercial projects 
 
 upon the La Plata, and the other for a new empire upon the 
 Indus. The latest Morning Chronicle I have seen, one of 
 last month — and that paper is the Whig organ of England — 
 says, and the proposition is enunciated with characteristic 
 coolness, and with as much apparent candor, as if it were 
 extracted from the latest treatise upon public morals, " we 
 can never govern India so well as we might, until v:e ^possess 
 the whole of it." A congenial sentiment is quite as much 
 at home in every English breast, that America would be much 
 letter governed than it is, if England possessed the whole of it. 
 
 Let the British Government now say, two wars at the 
 same time are enough for the purposes of aggrandizement. 
 We will not encounter a third— we will give up this doubt- 
 ful and disputed claim, and hold on in America to wliat we 
 have got — we will do so much for peace. Let her do this, 
 and I, for one, will say, well done. You begin to practise, 
 though upon a small scale, as you preach. And why not do 
 so ? This territory is separated by an ocean and a continent 
 from England. She cannot long hold it, if she should gain 
 it. I mean long, compared withthe life of nations ; whereas 
 it joins us, intervenes between us and our communication 
 with tlie Pacific, will form an integral — I do not doubt a 
 perpetual — portion of our confederacy, will be, in time, a 
 necessary outlet for our population, and presents all those 
 elements of contiguity and of position, which indicate and 
 invite political unions. 
 
 But it has been said and resaid, in the Senate and out of 
 it, that two great nations cannot go to war. And why can- 
 not two great nations go to war against one another, as well 
 as two great nations combined agauist a small one ? So far 
 as honor contemns a disparity offeree, the former would be 
 mucli more honorable than the latter. 
 
 What is going on in the La Plata, where France and Eng- 
 land have sent their united fleets and armies agauist the Ar- 
 gentine republic, and where the eclioes of their cannon are 
 ascending the Parana and its vast tributaries, till they are 
 lost in the gorges of the Andes ? 
 
 There can be no war in this enhghtened age of the world t 
 What, then, is passing in Africa, where one hundred thou- 
 sand Christian bayonets have driven the Arab from his home, 
 and are pursuing him into the desert, the refuge of the tiur- 
 ban since the days of the patriarchs ? 
 
 What is passing upon the shores of the Euxine, where the 
 Cossack has left his native plains, and, at the call of Russia, 
 is ascenduig the ridges of the Caucasus to subdue its indi- 
 genous races, and to substitute the mild rule of the Musco- 
 vite for their own patriarchal form of government — depend- 
 ence upon the Czar for dependence upon themselves ? 
 
 And what is passing in the Punjaub, where the last ad- 
 vices left two mighty armies almost within sight of each 
 other, after having fought a great battle of Hindoo ambition 
 against English moderationl 
 
 And how long since an enlightened Government, par ex- 
 cellence, broke the barrier of Chinese power, which has so 
 long insulated a vast emphe, and scattered dismay and death 
 along its coasts, because its rulers had interdicted the sale 
 of opium, a drug equally destructive to the moral faculties 
 and to the physical powers of man? The Tartar passed the 
 great wall, and planted his horse tails upon the towers of 
 Pekin. He then became a Chinese, and the empire went 
 on as before. But the Englishman, with his cannon-balls 
 and his opium, has introduced an innovation into the habits 
 and condition of one-third part of the human race, wliich 
 may fatally affect its future prosperity. 
 
 And how long is it since an English aniiy pissed the gates 
 of Asia, and, ascenditig the table-land of that continent, if 
 it had not been annihilated by a series of disasters, which 
 have few parallels in modern warfare, might have reversed 
 the march of Alexander, and reached the JMediterranean by 
 Nineveh, and Bab}'lon, and Jerusalem? 
 
 And only five short years have elapsed since Christian 
 cannon were heard in the mountains of Lebanon, and their 
 bombs exploded among the broken monuments of Sidon. 
 
 In this brief vievi^ and review of pending and recent wars, 
 I do not advert to the hostilities going on among some of the 
 States of Spanish origin upon this continent, in Hayti, in 
 Southern Africa, upon the frontiers of the colony at the Cape 
 of Good Hope, in Madagascar, and in various islands of the 
 Eastern ocean, because these are small wars, and some of 
 them are waged by civilized nations against barbarous tribes, 
 and hardly worthy of attention in these days of philanthro- 
 py — of that philanthropy which neglects objects of misery at 
 home, whether m England or Ireland, the relief of which 
 would be silent and unobtrusive, and seeks them everywhere 
 else through the world, that they may be talked of and ex- 
 hibited as proofs of benevolence — which, as an eminent 
 Frencli writer says, overlooks the wants of our neigh- 
 bors, but goes to the north pole upon a crusade of charityf 
 which has an innate horror at the very idea of black slavery, 
 but looks calmly and philosophically, and with no bowels of 
 
M 
 
 coinpassion, nor compunctions of remorse upon white sla- 
 very and brown slavery, amounting to millions upon mil- 
 lions in Russia, and in tlie EmjjUsIi possessions in Indi.i and 
 elsewhere, btteause, lorsootli, tlii^ servitude is not in the 
 United States, ;ind ncitlier cotton nor sugar will be aflbcled 
 by it. 
 
 These, and the Btlgian war, asid the Spanish war, and 
 the Greek war, ;uc events of hut yesterday, yet soundins; in 
 our eai-s, and dwelling upon our tongues." And I niighf go 
 on witli these proofs and illustrations of the pugnacious dis- 
 po-ition of the world, till your patience and niine were ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 Wliy, sir, if England had a temple of Janus, as Rome had 
 of old, it would be iis seldom shut, as was tliat of her impe- 
 rial prototype. The first fifteen years of this very century 
 were nearly all passed in the greatest war known perhaps in 
 the annals of mankind; and there are Senators in this body, 
 and I among the number, who were born at the close of one 
 war widi England, and have lived through another, and who 
 are perhaps destined to witness a third. And yet zealous 
 but ill-judging men would try to induce us to east by our 
 armor, and lay open our country, because, forsooth, the age 
 is too enligluened to tolerate war. I am afraid we are not 
 as good as these peace men, at all sacrifices, persuade them- 
 selres and attempt to persuade others. 
 
 But, sir, to advert to another topic. I perceive — and I am 
 happy to find it so — that there has been a nearer union of 
 sentiment on one branch of this subject between the honor- 
 able Senator from Maryland and myself than I had supposed , 
 All I regret is, that he had not avowed his opinion earlier in 
 the session ; for I should have felt myself greatly encouraged 
 in my course by the identity of our views respecting the dan- 
 ger of the countrj'. The honorable gentleman says : " We 
 all have felt at onetime, at least — I trust that tliat time has 
 passed — the nation was in imminent danger of war." "From 
 ' the moment the President of the United States deemed it 
 ' right and becoming, in the very outset of his official caieer, 
 ' to announce to the world, that the title of the United States 
 ' to the northwest territory «'as clear and indisputable, down 
 ' tu the period of his Message in December, when he reit- 
 ' erated the assertion, I could not see how it was possible 
 ' war was to be averted." " I could not but listen with dis- 
 'may and alarm at what fell from the distitiguished Senator 
 'from Michigan at an early period of this session." 
 
 Now, sir, I have not the slightest nash to misinterpret the 
 sentiments of tlie Senator from Maryland ; but I frankly con- 
 fess I do not understand how, \vdth "the opinion he expresses, 
 tliat war was unavoidable, any remarks of mine could have 
 been thus characterized. I am well aware, indeed, that 
 they came hke a bomb-shell into a powder magazine. But 
 why, I have yet to learn. Like the honorable Senator from 
 Maryland, the moment I read the President's Message, I 
 saw, to my own conviction at least, that our relations with 
 England were in a critical situation ; and that a regard to 
 our duty, as representatives and sentinels of the people, re- 
 quired us to take measures of precaution, proportioned to 
 the danger, whatever that might be. The President, with a 
 due regard to his own responsibility, as well as to the just 
 expectations of his countrymen, sp"read before us, not only 
 his own views and recommendations, but the whole diplo- 
 matic correspondence, which had passed between the two 
 Governments, on the subject of Oregon. Well, we all saw 
 there vi'as a dead halt in the march of the negotiations. The 
 President told us, in effect, they were closed. I am not, sir, 
 very tenacious as to the word. I do not attach that import- 
 ance, in fact, to the condition itself, which the Senator from 
 North Carolina appears to do. I am willing to call it closed, 
 or terminated, or suspended, or, in the Executive phrase, 
 " dropped." All I wish to show is, tliat nothing was going 
 on. Why the honorable Senator from North Carolina dwelt 
 with such earnestness upon this point, I do not comprehend, 
 unless, indeed, he supposed, that if the negotiations were 
 closed, they were closed forever, beyond the reach of tlie 
 parties. If such were his views, I do not partake them. I 
 trust no question of mere etiquette will keep the paities sep- 
 arated, if other circumstances should indicate they might be 
 brought together. Such a course of action, or rather of in- 
 action, would deserve the reprobation of the whole world. 
 But however this may be, tbe President said, that all at- 
 tempts at compromise had failed. These are his words. He 
 invited us to sive the notice, for the termination of the joint 
 occupation of the country. He said it was all ours, and that 
 our title to it u-a^ maintained by irrcfragalle facts and ars^i- 
 ments ; and he said, also, that at the "end of the year, the 
 temporary measui-es, which a regard to treaty stipulations 
 allowed us only to adopt at this time, must be abandoned, 
 and our jurisdiction over the wholp country established and 
 maintained. Such were, in effect, the views submitted to 
 us by the Chief Magistrate of the nation, in the dischaige of 
 a solemn duty, committed to him by tiie Constitution. 
 
 One would think there were elements enough of trouble ' 
 to engage the attention of the National Legislature, and to 
 command its immediate action. If the ship of State were' 
 to be steered by the chart thus prepared by the pilot, either 
 Great Britain must turn from her course, or we nmst meet 
 her. There was no other alternative. She must gainsay 
 much she had said. She must relinquish much she had 
 claimed. She must concede much she had denied. She 
 must do what a proud nation does with reluctance — retrace 
 her steps in the face of the world, and lower herself in her 
 own estimation. I did not say she would not do all this. I do 
 not say so now. But looking to her history, to her position, 
 and to the motives of human conduct— as these operate upon 
 comnmnities, as well as upon individuals — I had great diffi- 
 culty in believing that she would do it, and I said so. And 
 there was yet another element of uncertainty, combined with 
 all these causes of embarrassment, and that was the doubt, 
 if she came to the par.illel of 49°, whether she would find 
 our Government r.-^ady to come back to the same line. I 
 know nothing of the intentions of either Government upon 
 that subject. I cannot speak authoritatively, and tlieretbre 
 I doriot undertake to speak at all. I know as little as any 
 one in tliis room, be he actor or spectator in the scene 
 that is passing. WTiether the offer would be accepted, if re- 
 peated, or whether it would be repeated, if dsmati4ed. All 
 I know is, that as tlie basis of an amicable adjustlhent, tliat 
 time, which, while it mends some things mars others, is 
 every day increasing the diffieultj' of its establishment; andJ 
 that, as a nie;ms of' terminating this controversy, I believe 
 the question is rapidly passing from the control of tlie Gov- 
 ernment to the control of public opinion. 
 
 Under these circumstances, I introduced resolutions of in-i 
 quiryinto the necessity of adopting measures forthe defence 
 of the country, and, on the loth of December, I advocatcdl 
 their adoption and explained my views, of which Ihave now 
 troubled tlie Senate with a brief summary, and to which the 
 honorable Senator says he listened witli "dismay and! 
 alarm." " Dismay and alarm" at propositions for defence, 
 when the gentleman himself says that "tlie nation was iiii 
 imminent danger" ! ^A^lcn " he could not see how it was, 
 possible war was to be avoided"! For it will be observed, , 
 tliey were subsequent circumstances, subsequent by some- 
 weeks, which removed tliis impression of the danger of wan 
 made by the President's Inaugural Address, and byhisMes-- 
 sage at the commencement of the session. They were the 
 speeches of the Senators from Missouri and New York, and i 
 especially the speech recently delivered by the Senator fromn 
 North Carolina. For myself I did not hear one word fall I 
 from the Senators from Missouri and New York, so far as 1 1 
 recollect, in which I did not fully concur. The former, be- 
 sides the authority which long experience, high talents, and I 
 great services to his country and his part}-, give to all he says. . 
 here and elsewhere, understands this whole subject bettei i 
 perhaps than any man in the nation. And we all have bornci 
 our tribute of gratification to the able and statesmanlike ex-i 
 position of the matter given by the Senator from New York.v| 
 I did not understand either of these Senators, as alluding to 
 the ulterior course of tlie President, or seeking to express; 
 any opinion respecting the result of this controversy. Aiioi 
 I will ask the Senator from Maryland whetlier, upon a grave ' 
 question like this, it is not safer and wiser to deduce tht- 
 views of the President from two public and solemn docu-i 
 ments, spreading before his country his opinions and fore 
 shadowing his course, rather than from the construetior: 
 given them by others, and resting upon what is called acts o ' 
 omission and of commission. 
 
 It is not a little curious, but it is nevertheless true, tha 
 during the discussions brought out by my resolutions,' gen 
 tlemen on the other side of the Senate took the opportunity 
 of expressing their entire concurrence in the views ami' 
 course of the President, and avowed their gialification a i 
 the Executive statements and recommendations. ThouglJ 
 a condensed narrative of the negotiations accompanied thdi 
 Message and formed the groundwork of the suggestions subi 
 mitted to us, and though the correspondence was spread oun 
 in full before us. AVhat is now thought upon this subject on 
 the other side of the chamber, it needs not that I should | ' 
 tell. The views there expressed are as unequivocal as thej 
 are condemnatory. " We all have felt," says the Senatoi 
 from Maryland, "that war was imminent," and still mor< 
 emphatically, " I could not see how it was possible war wa: 
 to be averted." 
 
 But I may be permitted to ask the honorable Senator, i 
 war, in his opinion, was thus imminent, and not to b( 
 averted, how happened it that my remarks " filled him wjtf 
 alarm and dismay.'" I thought there was danger of war 
 and so it appears did he. And his estimate of the dange 
 was higher than mine ; for I thought that among other mean; 
 of avoiding it, instant and adequate preparations might ex 
 hibit such powers of offence and defence, and such a spin 
 
13 
 
 n tiic country, that England might pause before she would 
 Irive us to the last alternative of injured nations. And 
 herefore was I so anxious for an immediate and decisive 
 nanifestation upon tliis subject. But we have all siUfered 
 ', ;lie=e resolutions to sleep, as I remarked the ot)ier day, if 
 ! lot the sleep of death, a slumber almost as quiet; and 
 ,i tjhough they were a little startled by the President's Mes- 
 ^j-jfeage, still, "before their full resuscitation into life, it may be 
 ii lece'ssMV, that thai same solemn warning should penetrate 
 ■;, :hese maVble Halls, which has said to other improvident na- 
 , lions, awake! the enemy is upon you. If, then, both the 
 . Senator and myself were apprehensive of war, and he 
 ,,'j thought it could not be averted, the " dismay and alarm" 
 ,jj which my remarks occasioned, did not result from any dif- 
 3 Ference of views upon that subject. And, as these remarks 
 " I'aad but two objects — one to show the danger v.^e were in, 
 and the other to guard against it — it would seem to be the 
 atter at which the honorable Senator took exception: and 
 I ,a is certainly a cause of mortification, that I managed my 
 subject so awkwardly, as to convert my prepositions for de- 
 fence into a matter for "alarm and dismay." 
 
 Since then, however, sir, another note of warning has 
 reached us from the eiisteni hemisphere, and we not only 
 Snow that England is arming, but the so\'ereign herself has 
 innounced the fact in the most imposing manner, and has 
 called upon Parhament to extend these armaments still fur- 
 ;hGr. And we now exliibit to the world the extraordinary 
 spectacle of a nation in a state of perfect tranquillity — I might 
 rather say of apathy, almost — ^^'itllout an army, without a 
 militia — for oiu: militia is unfortunately nearly disorganized 
 —with untinished and unfmnished defences, with an inade- 
 quate supply of the materiel of war, «ith a navy calculated 
 only for a state of peace, with three thousand six hundred 
 miles of seacoast on the Atlantic, and one thou^and three 
 hundred miles on the Pacific, and four thousand one hun- 
 dred miles of interior frontier from Eastport to flie line where 
 54° 40' strikes the ocean, and two thousand four hrmdred miles 
 of interior frontier from the southwestem corner of Oregon to 
 the Rio del Norte — making a boundary of eleven thousand four 
 hundred miles, agreeably to the calculation I have procured 
 from the librarian, and penetrable in all directions. While, 
 at the same time, we are involvjd in a great controversy 
 with the most formidable nation — formidable in the means 
 ;of injuring us — upon the face of the globe, which is buck- 
 ling on its armor, and telling the world, througU its sovereign, 
 that it will mai}itain its interests and its honor — which, be- 
 ing translated into plain American, means tliat it will hold 
 on to its claims. 
 
 Mr. President, a great deal has been said, botli here and 
 elsewhere, respecting the probability of war— whether it 
 will result from the present condition of the two nations. 
 Some gentlemen tliink this is a legitimate subject of inquiry, 
 arising out of the principal question — that of the notice — 
 directly before us; While others think we should decide tlie 
 question on its own merits, leaving out of view the conse- 
 quences, to which it may lead. Certainly, a question of ter- 
 ritorial right should be judged and determined nakedly, and 
 unembarrassed by other considerations. We owe that to 
 our own honor. Still, it becomes prudent men, especially 
 prudent statesmen, wiien taking an unportant step, to look 
 to its results. Neither national nor individual acts are in- 
 sulated — one measure leads to another. It seems to me it is 
 not only our right, but our duty, as the Representatives of 
 the States, to inquire where this raea.sure will conduct us. 
 If to a stable peace, so much the better. If to war, let us 
 eontemiilate its prospects and its dangers, and let us prepare 
 for its consequences. But, at any rate, let us comnmne 
 togetlipr, and not blindly ru?h into the future, rather driven 
 by our instuicts, than guided by our reason. 
 
 Our first object is to preserve our rights; our next to do 
 that peacefully. While we all hope that war will be avert- 
 ed, that hope will never be strengthened by underrating the 
 capacity of eitlier nation to defend itself, or to injure its op- 
 ponent. For my own part, I see no want of patriotism in 
 stating plainly and frankly the means of annoyance that 
 England possesses; and I think the course of my honorable 
 friend from Delaware upon that subject was equally patriotic 
 and judicious. Tliereissaidto be a bird in the desert, which 
 hides its head in the sand, and then thinks it is safe from 
 danger, because it cannot see it. Let us not imitate this 
 folly-. Let us look directly at what we must encounter, if 
 we are forced to war, and then let us behave like reason- 
 able men, and make reasonable preparation to meet it. 
 
 I see it said in a late London Herald, that we cannot carry 
 on war, because we cannot procure the means to meet tlie 
 necessary expenditures. The same assertion has been made 
 in some of our own journals, and even by liigher authority. 
 The Senator from South Carolina has referred in this con- 
 nexion to a venerable man, for whom, and for whose pat- 
 
 riotic* services, I have great and sincere respect, who has 
 awakened from a pohtical slumber of almost a quarter of a 
 ceritury, and presents himself to his countrjTuen with elab- 
 orate statistical tables, showing the peciniiary cost of war, 
 and tlie burdens it bring^'With it. All this is unnecessary. 
 It is taught in the very horn-book of national expenditures. 
 Ours is not a question of the cost of war, but of its necessity. 
 That same eminent man, the survivor of the cabinets of Mr. 
 Jeiierson and of Mr. Madison, was understood, in 1812, to 
 entertain a sunilar repugnance againt committing the desti- 
 nies of liis country to war, which he now exhibits, and to 
 foreshadow similar difficulties. I do not know if the fact be 
 so. I can repeat only the rumors of that day. It was then 
 asserted and believed, that some report or document from 
 the Secretary of the Treasury was intended to dampen the 
 national ardor, by an imposing array of the contributions it 
 would be necessary to levy upon the country, in the event of 
 war, and thus to prevent its occurrence. But the effort, if 
 made, was useless then, and it will be useless now. The 
 war went on, because it could not be avoided without a sac- 
 rifice of the national rights and honor, and it came to a glo- 
 rious conclusion. It pushed us forward in all the elements 
 of advancement. And as we did then so shall we do now. 
 If a war is forced upon us, we shall meet it mth its dangers 
 and its responsibilities. No array of figures vi'ill stop tlie 
 people in their patriotic course. You might as well attempt 
 to stop the surges of the ocean beating upon the seacoast by 
 marks in the sand, which the first wave sweeps away, and 
 then passes on. 
 
 As to this notion, that a war cannot be maintained without 
 cash enough ui tlie possession of the Government to carry it 
 on, or the means of procuring it at any time by loans, the 
 two successful experiments we have made have demonstrated 
 its fallacy. I do not stop to point out the peculiarities in our 
 condition which prevent our national exertions from being 
 paralyzed by deficient resources. They are to be found in 
 tlie spirit and patriotism of our people ; in the common in- 
 terest they feel in a Government, established by them, and 
 responsible to them ; in the system of private credit, which 
 almost makes part of our institutions, and which often sep- 
 arates by mde inten-als the purchase and the payment; in 
 the abundance and cheapness of the necessaries of life, and 
 in the military ardor which stimulates our young men and 
 sends them to the standard of their country. iSfo modern 
 Croesus, be he a king of financiers, or a financier of kings, 
 holds in his hands the action of this Government. But even 
 in Bi^Sope, a decisive experiment lias shown, that the exer- 
 tions of a nation are not to be crippled by a crippled treasury. 
 One of the great errors of Mr. Pitt arose from his belief, that 
 as the French resources and credit were deranged and almost 
 destroyed, therefore France was incapable of the necessary 
 efforts to defend herself against the formidable coalition, at 
 the head of which England placed herself, and to maintain 
 which she poured out her blood as freely as her treasure. 
 But the result proved the folly and the fallacy of all this, not- 
 withstanding the depreciation of the French paper, and the 
 difficulties consequent uponit. What was the progress and 
 the result of this effort to prevent a people from changing 
 and reorganizing their Government, is written upon the 
 pages of a quarter of a century of war, and still more pUiinly 
 upon the oppressed taxation of England; which now weighs 
 upon her present condition like an incubus, and overshad- 
 ows her future with dark clouds of adversity. 
 
 I now propose to submit some observations upon the re- 
 marks presented to the Senate a few days since, by the dis- 
 tinguished Senator from South Carolina. The originality of 
 Uis views, and the force of the illustrations, ^vitll which they 
 were supported, give them gieat consideration; and as it seems 
 to me, that in some important particulars, their tendency is 
 erroneous, I desire to communicate the impression they 
 made upon me. 
 
 While I shall do this, with the freedom, which a sincere 
 search after truth justifies, I shall do it with tlie respect that 
 the eminent services and high character of tlie Senator jus- 
 tify, and that an uninterrupted friendship of thirty years, 
 which has been to me a source of great gratification, natu- 
 rally inspires. 
 
 The Senator states, that when this proposition for notice 
 to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon was first sub- 
 mitted for consideration, he was opposed to it. But that 
 now he is hi favor of it in some modified form ; the form, I 
 believe, it assumes in the resolution of the Senator from 
 Georgia. 
 
 That his motives of action were the same in both cases — 
 a desire to preserve the peace of the two countries ; that 
 in the former part of • •..; ^f--;- '-- •''"""■'it "ip notice wouM 
 lead to war, and the ? 
 it would lead to pea ■'.:C- 
 
 Certainlv, Mr. Pr ■ • 
 
14 
 
 ttiftn to occupy. A chtinge of action on questions of expe- 
 diency, wlu-rc (ircmnstaiicps have changed, is a dictate of 
 true wisdom. H", who b,):isL-i lie has never changed, boasts, 
 in fact, th.at the Icisons of experience have been lost upon 
 him; and that he grows older without growing wiser. But 
 before a change takes place in our approbation or condemna- 
 tion of a great question of luitional policy, the reasons which 
 dictate it should be carefully considered, and clearly estab- 
 lished. 
 
 Has this been done by the Senator from South Carolina.' 
 I think not. IIj assumes the very fact, upon which his 
 whole argument rests. He assumes that a great change has 
 taken place botli in this country and in E^igland, in public 
 opinion upon this subject, which will necessarily lead to a 
 comproasise, and thus to im amicable adju^tuient of this se- 
 riou; and long-pending controversy. 
 
 Of the fact its?lf, tluis alleged, the Senator furnishes no 
 proof. Indeed, he attempts to furnish none. He merely 
 says : " There is one point, in which we nmst all be agreed, 
 ' ttiat a great change has taken place since the commence- 
 
 • uient of this di:CUssion in relation to notice, in its bearings 
 
 < upon the que-tion of peace or war." " Public opinion has 
 
 < had time to develop itself, not only on tliis, but on the other 
 ' side of the Atlantic, and that opinion has pronounced most 
 'au.libly and clearly in favor of compromise."' 
 
 " As things now stand, I no longer regard it as a question 
 ' whether the controversy shall be pacifically arranged or not, 
 
 * nor even in what manner it shall be arranged. I regard ttie 
 ' arrangement now simply a question of time," &c. 
 
 Mr. President, I cannot partake this confidence. The 
 signs of tlie times are anytliing but auspicious to me. It will 
 be perceived, that the annuueiution thus certainly made of 
 the peaceful termination of this matter, rests upon the 
 change in public opinion and upon the conviction, that both 
 Gjvernments are ready to comprosuise, and both prepared 
 to come to the same line ; so much so, indeed, that tlie Sen- 
 ator adds, " he trusts that iu concluding it there will be no 
 unuf csssary delay." 
 
 In all this, sir, I am under the impression, there is a great 
 misnppreiiension. As to the wdvcrsidity of the propatition, 
 t/iiit aU are agreed its tj this change. I know there is an error. 
 For myself, my conviction is as strong as human conwction 
 can be, not only that tiie change thus indicated has not 
 taken place, but that a great change lias been going on in 
 a contraiy direction. 1 believe that the opposition to a com- 
 promise upon tlje parallel of 49° has increased, is increasing, 
 and will go on to increase ; and that both here and^ Bug 
 gland, public opinion is less and less confident in an amica- 
 ble settlement of this rti-put''. I shall notp'irsue this matter 
 into its details. I will merely remark, that the eridences of 
 public opinion, which reach us, whether bonie here by let- 
 ters, by newspapers, by the declarations of conventions, or 
 by the resolutions of legislative bodies, is decisive and indis- 
 putable. And, in proof of this, look at the passage of the 
 resolutions in the House of Representatives by a majority 
 almost unknown in a free country upon a great question like 
 tliis, and involving such momentous consequences ; and this, 
 too, when the Senator says, he thought their passage v\'0uld 
 lead to war. And what say the advices from England .' 
 They speak a language as positive, as it is minatory. What 
 says the '• Standard," of March 3, the great Tory organ .' I 
 will tell you : " But will the American Congress confirm the 
 insolent and unwarrantable tone adopted by this bragga- 
 docio V &c. And the person thus denominated by these 
 models of all that is decorous, so often recommended to us 
 for our study, is the President of this great Republic. " And 
 dreadful as is the alternative, it will be with the utmost dif- 
 ficulty that any British Minister can escape from it witli 
 honor." The last London Times that I have seen says : 
 " q'he joint navigation of the Columbia, the right of harbors 
 ' on the sea-coast, and the right of traltle for the Hudson Bay 
 « Company on one buik of the river, are, we think, demands 
 ' neither unjust nor extrav;igant." The London Gazett. ,of 
 March 3, saj'S : " The news frjm the United Stnta ju^HJics 
 ' the fears ice have repeatedly expressed of the determined spirit 
 ' of hostility iduch pervades a poivcrful party m the United 
 * States." "The London Snn, a neutral paper, says: "The 
 
 < news from this country has produced a strong feeling of in- 
 ' (lignation among our commercial circles ; and those who 
 'have all along opposed the expediency of war, on account 
 
 < of mercantile connexions, now openly claim a vindication 
 'oftlie honor of the comitryatthe handsof the Executive." 
 <' The feeling everywhere is, that England, having shown as 
 
 < much forbearance as is compatible with her station in the 
 
 < scale of nations, is now called upon to treat the proceedings 
 'of the American legislators with the contempt they de- 
 ' serve." The Liverpool Courier of March 4, says : " The 
 * consequences to which it may lead (the refusal to arbitrate) 
 ' may be most calamitous. But the Americans will only 
 
 ' have themselves to blame, if War ensues; for England hai 
 ' done all in her power to bring matters to a salislUctory and 
 ' peaceful issue." Such are the evidences of pulilic opinion 
 iu England, which tlie last packet brought us ; and of tli8 
 favorable cliaage there, which renders a compromise certain, 
 and a question only of time. 
 
 The honorable Senator has referred, in this connexion, to| 
 the declaration of Sir Robert Peel, made some time sine 
 the British House of Commons, that he regretted tlieir Min- 
 iter had not transmitted to his Government the proposition 
 of a compromise upon the parallel of 4S° ; that if not satis- 
 fiictory, it might have been made the basis of a mnditicd ofJ'cr. 
 I am not inclined to draw as favoral le a conclusion, how- 
 ever, as the honorable Senator, from this incidental remark, 
 made, not to us, but in tlie courseof a Parliamentary discus- 
 sion. In fact, it is so cantiou-ly expressed, as to lead to no 
 useful deduction respecting his real views. It is a mere bar 
 ren remark. Had the Premier intended it should produce 
 any practical consequences, he would have communicated 
 to our Government the views of the British Cabinet, and 
 would have accepted tlia otfor, or returned it with the pro- 
 posed modification. But we hear nothing of this disappro- 
 bation — no, not disapprobation, but of soft regretat tiieijasty 
 dxisiou of the British Minister here — till six months after it 
 took place, ai.d then we leain it in the public debates, and 
 that is the last of it. [t is to me a curious chapter in the his- 
 tory of British diplomacy, tliat a Minister would venture to 
 take tlie grave respoiieihility of rejecting such a proposition, 
 without refening it to his Gnvernment, and he is not even 
 censured for it. If he had b?en recalled, or a successor sent 
 out, with instructions to accept the propositions made by 
 our Government for a compromise, we should then have 
 had a proof of sincerity better than a barren declaration, and 
 which might have led to a better state of feeling. 
 
 The Senator from South Carolina has entered at some 
 length into a def nee of his views respecting the acquisition 
 of Oregon, by what is called the process of masterly inactiv- 
 ity. And if he has not made converts to his opinion, he has 
 gained many admirers of his talents by his masterly vindi- 
 cation of it. 
 
 Certainly, sir, it is often the part of true wisdom in tliia 
 world to stand still — to wait for tiirie and circumstances. 
 There is a great deal of wisdom in old proverbs, and one of 
 tUem says, '-Let well enough alone.-' Time has wrought many 
 wonders for our country, and is destined to vs^ork many more. 
 The practical difiiculty is, to determine when inaction should 
 cea--e and action commence, and how the operations of time 
 can be best aided by enterprise and industry. The honora- 
 ble Sjnator says, that circumstances have got ahead of liis 
 system, and that he adverts to the subject, not to apply it, hut 
 to defend it. It seems to me, sir, it never could have pro- 
 duced the results tlie Senatoranticipated, and produced them 
 peacefully. 
 
 Here was an open question, which, foralmost forty years, 
 had occupied the attention of the two countries, which had 
 been kept at arm's length by an improvident arrangement, 
 instead of being grappled witli and adjusted, as it could have 
 been, and should have been, long ago, and which had at 
 length increased to a fearful magnitude; and, what is still 
 more, had begun to enlist passions, and feelings, and inter- 
 ests, that threatened to take tlie controversy from tlie pen, 
 and to commit it to the sword. The claims of two great 
 countries to a distant territory were unsettled, and in a 
 condition unprecedented in tlie history of national inter- 
 course. Each with a right to occupy the whole of the ter- 
 ritory, but each liable to have tliis right defeated by the 
 jirevious action of the other party — each holding a remote 
 possession, b.ginninj; to iill up by emigration witli tlicir re- 
 spective citizens and subiects,liardy, enterprising, and some- 
 what pugnacious, intermingled upon the same soil, seiz- 
 ing it as they could, and holding it as they might, without 
 any of tho^e improvements, which require for their creation 
 and support the joint and legal action of a community, and 
 wlio'ly irresponsible for their acts tnwards one anotlier. ex- 
 cept througli the medium of tribunals belonging to the party 
 claiming allegiance over the aggressor, and posses.ring no 
 sympathy with the complainant. Tlie end of all tliis may 
 be foreseen without the gift of secord sight. Collisions must 
 be inevitable. The only wonder is, they have not already 
 occurred. ^And the first gun that is tired upon the Columbia 
 will send its echoes to the Potomac and the Thames. And 
 think you.that the matter will be coolly examined, dispas- 
 sionately discussed, and amicably arranged.' No, sir; each 
 nation will believe its own stor)', and botli will be ready to 
 arm, and assert its honor, and defend its citizens. All his- 
 tory is full of these incidents; and tlie peace of two great 
 nations is now held by the slightest tenure, dependent upon 
 passions and interests to be called into fierce action upon 
 the shores that look out upon China and Japan. We are 
 
15 
 
 ;o!d that time is the great physician, who miglit haVe cured 
 I'ais disordered state of our political afl'atrs. I am a firm 
 lelieverin the silent andcea-reless operations of that mighty 
 „ent. But this case was beyond its power. If, indeed, time 
 ifould stand still for one of the parties, and move only for 
 he other— stand still for England, and move on for us— our 
 tate of progress would soon pour through the passes of the 
 locky Mountains a host of emigrants who would spread 
 iver all the hills and valleys from the summit of that great 
 larrier to that other barrier, the ocean itself, which says to 
 he advancing settlements, Come no farther. But neither 
 ime nor England would stand still. Her Government is sa- 
 acious, alive to her interests, and ready to maintain them. 
 She knows the value of the country as well as we do, and 
 ippreciatesit perhaps higher. No one can read the speeches 
 n the House of Commons on the 4th of April last, without 
 eing sensible, that tlie subject, in all its extent, has occu- 
 ied the attention of the British Government, and that the 
 :ountry itself will occupy its fostering care. Thmk you that 
 hat Government would have continued to see band after 
 land of our citizens leaving our frontier settlements, lost to 
 mman observation almost for months while passing through 
 he desert with its toils, its privations, and its dangers, and 
 "nally emerging into the land of pronnse, to seize it, and to 
 old it, and would have looked cahnly on, receding as we 
 (Ivanced, retreadng to the hill as we desceiided into the val- 
 ey, and finally yielding us quiet possession of this long- 
 lisputed territoiy.? He, who does not believe all this, must 
 lelieve that time would not have peacefully adjusted this 
 iontroversy for us. But, besides, this process of adjustment 
 loes not assuine that our right to exclude the British from 
 he country will be increased by settlement. It may add 
 trength to our power, but none to our title. It does not 
 )resuppose that war is to be averted, but only postponed. 
 The rights of England, at the end of any given period, will 
 e precisely what they now are; and, unless she should vol- 
 mtarily relinquish them, a conflict would be inevitable. It 
 ;eenis to me very clear, that if slie would ever be disposed 
 o abandon the country, she would do it now, when the dis- 
 )arity offeree there is not such as to cast the reproach of 
 imidity upon her counsels, and when the number of her 
 iubjects is not such as to render diliicult a satisfkctory ar- 
 angement for tliem. 
 Mr. President, the Senator from South Carolina has held 
 p to our view a sombre picture of the calamities, which a 
 var with England would bring upon the United States — too 
 ombre, sir, if I am not utterly ignorant of tlie history and 
 ;ondition of my country, and of tlie energj' and spirit of my 
 'ountrymen. I shall not examine it feature by feature ; but 
 
 rere are certain portions I desire to present to the Senate. 
 What probable circumstances could require this country 
 o keep up a military and naval force of two hundred thou- 
 and men for ten years — the land portion of it divided into 
 ?even great armies — I confess my utter inability to conjec- 
 ure. Wliy the honorable Senator fixes upon that period for 
 he duration of the war, I know not. It is so wholly conjec- 
 ural as to elude the apphcation of any principle to it. Long 
 lefore its expiration, if we are not utterly unworthy of om- 
 lame and our birthright, we should sweep the British Power 
 Vom the continent of North America, and the remainder of 
 he time must be occupied by predatory incursions upon the 
 >oast and by hostilities upon the ocean. The dangers or dis- 
 Sisters, which this state of things brings with it, would require 
 but a small portion of the force considered necessary by the 
 
 anator. As to Mexico, I tiu=t we shall bear much from 
 ler. We owe that to our own stiength and to her weak- 
 less ; to our own position, not less than to the situation of 
 ler Government and to the quad civil war, which seems to 
 )e the curse of her condition. But should we be driven to 
 )ut forth our strength, peace would ensue, and speedily; but 
 t would be a peace dictated in her capital, and placing her 
 lolitical destiny at our disposition. 
 
 And besides, during the progress of such a war, to which 
 he honorable gentleman aliudes, who can tell the sphere of 
 ts operations, and what nations would become parties to it.? 
 low soon would the great maritime questions of our day 
 )resent themselves for solution ? How long would it be be- 
 bre England would revive and enforce those belligerent pre- 
 ensions, which drove us to war when we were neutral, and 
 wliich would drive other nations to war occupying the same 
 loiition.? How long before the violation of her flag would 
 irouse the public feeling of France, and compel her Govern- 
 nent to vindicate its honor? And who can tell what war of 
 Principles and opinions would come to add its excitement 
 ind passions to the usual struggles of contending nations .' 
 riie world is, indeed, in comparative repose ; but there are 
 lauses in operation which, if quickened into action by pe- 
 culiar circumstances, might shake the institutions of Europe 
 
 (their very foundations. I consider 'a war between Eng- 
 
 land and the United States for ten years, of for half of that 
 time, utterly impossible, without bringing into cohision the 
 grsat questions of our daj- — the right to govern and the duty 
 to submit — and into fierce action the interests and passions, 
 which such a struggle would excite— a struggle that must 
 come, but which such a war would accelerate. 
 
 In order, that I may remove even tlie possibility of misin- 
 terpreting the sentiments of the Senator, I will read an e.v- 
 tract or two from his speech. After alluding to the material 
 horrors of war, and doing justice to the courage of his coun- 
 trymen, he adds, that a war between us and Great Britain, 
 such as has been described, " in which every nerve and 
 ' muscle would be strained to the utmost, and every dollar 
 ' put in requisition Which could be commanded, could not 
 ' faU, under present circumstances, to work most disastrous, 
 ' and I fear incurable changes in the social condition of our 
 ' people, and in their political institutions." He then ad- 
 verts to the consequences of such a wa.-, drawing after it a 
 Mexican war and an Indian war. He tliinks we should 
 need two fleets, six or seven armies, one hundred million 
 of dollars annually, and a proportionate system of taxation. 
 He then continues, after shomiig the destruction of the 
 State governments, and the consolidation of all power in 
 the central authority, and that our very success would en- 
 gander a spirit inconsistent with the genius of our Govern- 
 ment: "It would then be a straight and downward road, 
 'which lea..ls to where so many free States have terminated 
 ' their career— a military de. potism. In the mean time we 
 ' should have to provide for three or four successful gene- 
 ' rals, who would soon be competing for the Presidency, and 
 'before the generation, which would have waged the war 
 ' would have passed away, they might possibly witness a 
 ' contest between hostUe generals for that supreme office— 
 ' a contest between him v/ho might conquer Mexico and him 
 ' v/ho might conquer Canada, terminated by the sv/ord." 
 
 But permit me to ask the Senator from South Carolina, if 
 all this were so, if his anticipations were certtiin, instead of 
 being purely gratuitous, ought the assurance of such events 
 to come from him, from such a high authority, in so high a 
 place.' In the Senate of the United States, and from "one 
 who has filled some of the mo;t important positions in our 
 Government ; wliose services and talents, and character gave 
 him great consideration wit'i his countrymsn ; who possesses 
 a European fame ; and whose opinions are quoted at this 
 n London and Paris as indications of our policy, 
 !e final result of this controvarsy.? Is it well thus 
 f. to the world our incapacity to defend ourselves .' 
 in fact the result. A Government dissolved, or 
 iiged to a despotism, a cou.atry ruined, and eventu- 
 ... jagments a prey to ambitious "generals, as the em- 
 pire of Alexander was partitioned among his lieutenants ! 
 War, then, becomes not a measure of safety, but a sisnal of 
 destruction to the American p-ople. We are powerless to 
 defend ourselves. If we are struck upon one cheek, v/e 
 must turn the other ; not in a spirit of Christian charity, but 
 in the despair of helplessness. We are bound together by a 
 fair-weather Government, incapable of riding out the storms 
 of foreign aggression. Submission must be our refuge, for 
 beyond submission is destruction. We shall exhibit the 
 extraordinary spectacle of a great people, great in nil the ele- 
 ments of power and pro.^peri ty, saying to the world, in effect, 
 we cannot contend with England. We are at her mercy, 
 for even success would ruin us. 
 
 Now, sir, this is not so. Tliere is not one man within the 
 sound of my voice whose heart does not tell him, suJi hiis 
 iiot been your pi-ist — -uchvill not he your future. Tiie hon- 
 orable Senator, in looking at the real calamities of war, 
 which I seek neither to conceal nor to deny, has suffrred 
 himself to overrate tliem. They have struck him more for- 
 cibly than they should do. The experiment of two wars 
 with Enghuid, into which we entered, and from which we 
 issued gloriously, puts the stamp of error upon tliese sad 
 forebouhigs. How they pushed us forward, in character and 
 position among tlie nations of the earth, I need not tell; nnr 
 need I say, that the march of this countiy in all ihat consti- 
 tutes the power and happiness of a p-?oplp, is a practical 
 proof, that those conflicts left no wounds upon our institu- 
 tions, and but temporory checks upon our prosperitv. 
 
 The honorable Senator has appealed to his past history in 
 proon that in presenting these views he acted in no unmanly 
 fear for himself, and that if war comes, he would be amon" 
 the last to flinch. No, Mr. President, no one in this nation 
 doubts that his course would be firm and patriotic, should 
 war be farced upon us. But he will permit me also to appeal ; 
 to appeal from the Senaj^iV?^ 1846 to tlie Representative of 
 1812. He is the Ultimusi^bi'inorum — thelaitof the Romans: 
 
 the sole survivor among 
 have passed from the 
 The last of the actors, 
 
 tion of statesmen who 
 
 ^^^ir countrr. 
 
 gave fie 
 
16 
 
 wo ill our second dixlaraiion of Iii(lopcndi:n.''P, '■cnrooly ir- 
 feiior in it* Ciuiscs ;ind consiHiUJiit-es to tlie first. He came 
 lirrf .voiins,', unknown to his country. He left these liulls 
 «ith a niatuiilyofl'.iin!', whicli rarely falls to tiie lot of any 
 statesman. I was then uptm the frimlit-r, and well do 1 re- 
 monibir with wiiatstrainiiiffeyes and beating hearts vveturn- 
 ed towards the Capitol, to know if the honor and interests of 
 our country would he asserted and maintainc d. Tiiere wen; 
 then two men here, upon whom, more th:in upon any others, 
 pL'rhap.s more than upon aJl others, devolved tlie task of atl- 
 vocatin!; the war, and of carrying lhroui;h the measures of the 
 Administration. And nobly did tiieyperr'onn their duty. Tliey 
 Were the honorable Senator from South Carolina, and a re- 
 tired stiitrsman. Mr. Clay, from wiiom, though it haa been 
 my fortune to differ in t'le i)arty contests tliat diviile us, yet 
 it has always been my pride to do justice tolas emin-nt qual- 
 ities, and to his bijjh services to his coiintrv, and e pjcially 
 to his services during our la^t eoiit;^^t with England. Tliey 
 were the leaders of tijat great legi-Ialive war, who, like the 
 Homeric heroes, threw themselves into the middle of the 
 fight, and fought the batrles of their pnrtv and of their coun- 
 try, with equMl tilents, firmness, and success. 
 
 As to the evils of war, he of u ' is blind to all historical 
 e.\psrience, who does not see them, and unfaithful to his 
 position, who does not acknowledge them. Tiiere is no 
 such representative of the States here. We all acknowledge 
 the evils of war, both moral and material. We (lilfer as to 
 their degree, aiul as to the power of this country to endure 
 and to inflict them. While the condition of England pre- 
 sents great means of annoyance, it presents also palpable 
 elements of weakness. I am not her pun^gvrist. I shall 
 never be accused of that. But if I see the defects of her 
 national charaetsr, I can see also her redeeming virtues. 
 I am sensibly ahve to the acts of injustice she has done us. 
 The feeling is deposited at my heart's core. But I do not 
 shut my eyes, either to her power or to the virtues she actu- 
 ally possesses. I need not tell what she has done to attract 
 the admiration of the world ; for her deeds of vvar and peace 
 are written upon many a bright page of human story. She 
 has reached a commanding eminence among the powers of 
 the earth — a giddy eminence ; and I believe she will find it 
 an unstable one. I do not, however, estimate her present 
 position as liigh as many do, and I consider it as misafe as 
 almost any one can. Tlie elemei:ts of her weakness he 
 upon the very surface of lier affairs, open to the most care- 
 less observer. But she has great military and-najiaJ estab- 
 lislmients, and she is augmenting and extendiiii 
 am not going to spread before the Senate the 
 . her powers of aimoyance and defence. Ta" 
 sufficiently done already. But I will e.xptess 
 conviction, that these tabular statements give an^!F^gera- 
 ted picture of her condition. Old vessels, old guns, mere 
 hulks, invalids, the relics of half a century of war, are ar 
 ranged in formidable lists of figures, and go to swell the 
 general aggregate. 
 
 Besides," she has peculiar drawbacks to the e.xotion of 
 her power. The seeds of danger are sown in the most im 
 portant province of her home empire, and may at any time 
 start up into an abundant har\est of ruin and disaster. Tlie 
 dragon-s teeth may become armed men. 
 
 She has possessions rouud the world to retain, and in 
 many of them a discontented population to restrain. H.r 
 conunerce, the very foui;dalion ot her prosperity and great- 
 ness, is scattered over ail the bays, and iidets, and suits, 
 and seas of the world; and he,Avho knows the daring char- 
 acter and enterprise of our people, knows that our public 
 and private armed vessels would almost sweep it from ex- 
 istence. But I shall not pursue this investigation further. 
 While I believe she will go to warvvilh us, if she cannot es- 
 cape from i t without wholly sacrificing her own honor, as she 
 ■\iews the question, I recollect she ha^ done so twice before, 
 with no credit to herself, but with iiup -rishable glory for us. 
 A few words as to tlie condition of hi-r finances, and her 
 means of carrying on a war. It is said to be thii last feather, 
 that breaks the camel's back. That the time will come 
 when the artificial and oppressive fiscal system of England 
 must break down, and, like the strong man of Israel, involve 
 hjr existing institutions in the fall, is as certain as any future 
 political event can be. But that time has not yet come, and 
 he must be a bolder or a wiser man than I am, to predict 
 when it will come. She has the same means now to meet 
 her war expenditures, which she has long had. The pow( r 
 of drawing upon the future for tlie exigencies of the present, 
 leaving the generations to come to pay the debt, or to ca>t 
 it off, like a burden too hea\y to be borne. At this verj- mo- 
 f. 1, " .'-:—",.,.,-,, opj„p„t vi:hj,.ii ..vill be almost a I 
 
 re .. iMf- ■ ! ' t: (fearfid 
 
 ov' - ,1' nichac- 
 
 angps. 
 
 As to the points of contrast between our condition and tha 
 of England, they are before tlie world; and for the purposes 
 of peace or war, we need not fear the most searching t'.\ain- 
 ination. 
 
 Ilippcn what may, \ve can neither be overrun nor con- 
 (jurrid. England might as well att^'inpt to blow up the rod 
 of Gibraltar with a sijuib, as to attempt to subdue us. I sup- 
 pose an Eiiglislmian even never thinks of that, and I do nol 
 know that I can exhibit in stronger terms its impossibility. 
 1 might easily spread bi-fore the Senate our capacity tc 
 annoy a maritime adversary, and to sweep thd British flag 
 from this part of the continent ; but I forbear. What wt 
 hare twice done in the days of our compaiative weakn'ss, 
 we can repeat and far exceed in these days of our strength. 
 Wiiile, therefore, I do not eonceiU from myself, that a wai 
 with E:)gland would temporarily check our progress, andi 
 lead many evils in its train, still I have no fear of the i.-sne,- 
 and have an abiding confidence, that we shall come out oi'itjt 
 mt indeed unharmed, but vvitli all the elements of our pros-; 
 perity safe, and with many a glorious achievement wriltei^: 
 on the pages of our history. 
 
 It pains me, sir, to hear allusions to the destruction of thiSi 
 Government, and to the dissolution of this confederacy. Itl 
 pains me, not because they inspire me with any fear, but be- 
 cause we ought to have one unpronounceable word, a-! tho! 
 Jews had of old, and that word is dissolution. \Vi- should 
 reject tlie feeling from our hearts and it-s nani" ironi our' 
 tongues. Tnis cry of ■' u o, wo, to Jerusalem," grates harslil^j 
 upon my ears. Our Jerusaleui is neither beleaguered nor idi 
 d.mger. It is yet the city u;)on a hill, glorious in what it is^- 
 stih more glorious, by the blessing of God, in what it is toi 
 be — a landmark, inviting the nations of the world, struggling! 
 upon the stormy ocean of political oppression, to fohuiv ush 
 to a haven of safety and of rational liberty. No English Titus;; 
 will enter our temple of freedom through a breach in tho; 
 battlements, to bear tlience the ark of our constitution audi, 
 the book of our law, to take their st;itions in a triunipiiai; 
 procession in the streets of a modern Rome, as trophies oil, 
 conquest and proofs of submission. 1 
 
 Many a raven has croaked in my day, but the augury has 
 failed, ami the Republic has marched onward. Manj- a 
 crisis has presented itself to the imagination of our political 
 Cassandras, but we have still Increased in pjlitical prosper-J 
 ity as we have increased in years, and that, too, with an ac- 
 celerated progress uuknovsii to the hiitory of the worldj;. 
 We have a class of men, xviiose eyes are always upon the 
 fiiturC;, overlooking the blessings around us, and" forever ap-' 
 prehen; ive of some great political evil, which is to arre-t our 
 course somewhere or other on tiiis side of the milienium.i 
 To them, we are the iningi; of gold, and silver, and bra -is, andJ 
 clay, contrariety in uniti", which tiie first rude blow of mis- 
 fortune is to strike from its pedestal. 
 
 For my o^vn part, I consider this the strongest governmenti 
 on the face of the earth for good, and the weakest for evil. 
 Strong, because supported by the public opinion of a people 
 inferior to none of the communities of tlie earth in all tiiati 
 coiiftitntes moral worth and usefiU knowledge, and wlio 
 have breathed into their political system tiie breath of life; 
 and who would destroy it, as they created it, if it were uii-i 
 worthy of tlieni, or failed to fulfil their just expectations. 
 
 Aiui weak for evil, from this x'ery consideration, whichjli 
 would make its follies and its faults the signal of its over-r 
 throw. It is the only Government in existence which uO' 
 revolution can subvert. It may be changed, but it provides, 
 fur its own change, when the public will requires. Plotsi 
 and insurructions, wid the various struggi^s, by which an op^i 
 pressed population manifest- its suft'eriiigs and seeks the i*- 
 eovery of its rights, have no place here. We have noihing,' 
 to fear but ourselves. ' 
 
 And the Senator from South Carolina will permit me toi 
 remark, that the apprehension he expresses, that a war iiiayy 
 bring forward military eliieftajns, who would ultimately es-- 
 taldish llieir own power upon the ruins of their eonntry'.^j 
 freedom, is, in my opinion, if not the last of all the evil-, one),' 
 of the very last, whicii this Republic has to fear. I wiil not! 
 stop to point out the circumstances of our position, charac- - 
 ter, and institutions, which render a military despoti.-mi 
 impossible in this country. They are written in burning .j 
 characters, not upon the wall, but upon the heart of every 
 American; and they need no seer to expound them. Our 
 safety is our union ; our only fear, disunion. In the moral 
 government of the world, national oft'ences are punished by 
 national calamities. It may be that we may fors.ike the God 
 of our fathers, and seek after strange gods. If we do, and 
 are struck with judicial blindness, we shall but add another to 
 the long list of nations unworthy of the blessuigs acquired 
 for them by preceding generations, and incapable of main-, 
 t mingthem; — but none as signally so as wc.